No Fury
by Loose Screw
Summary: Three of the team members are kidnapped by a man with a grudge. He will do almost anything to have his demands met, but something doesn't go quite right and the team is forced to work their hardest in order to save one of their own.
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

It is said that Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. SSA Aaron Hotchner knew that a woman scorned hath no fury like a grieving parent.

Reid looked at Morgan. Morgan looked at Hotch. Hotch stared down the barrel of a gun. The man aiming it at him could contain himself no longer.

"How could you say things like that? How could you stand there, with a child of your own, and say something like that? How could you live with yourself, knowing that you—"

"You cannot—"

"—knowing that you sentenced my daughter to death?" The man jerked the handgun, a CZ 75B 9mm, in Hotch's face. Hotch didn't flinch. The man silently shook in fury for several seconds before he calmed, a tear forming in the corner of his eye. "It wasn't your call to make."

"Sir, we don't mean you any harm," Morgan said as he stepped forward, gaining confidence in the fact that the man didn't seem to mean any harm to them in turn. "We do our jobs—and we do them well—but it is physically impossible to save everyone. It would be suicide for us to even try."

The man glanced at Morgan, then back at Hotch. He closed his eye and the tear dropped.

"So please, drop your weapon," Morgan continued, raising his hands as he stepped closer. "We will do what we can, if you will let us go." He placed his hand on the barrel of the gun and started to pull it down.

The man's eyes snapped open. He growled as he tried to jerk the gun back up, taking Morgan by surprise. Morgan's hand slipped from the barrel, and he grabbed for the man's wrist as he tried to recover control. The man pulled and twisted, forcing Morgan's arms to the side and trying to pry his hands away. The struggle went to the concrete floor as each man pulled on the gun, and Hotch was sure that the man would be willing to use it if he regained full control of it. He started to move in to help when he saw that Morgan was beginning to lose, and he felt Reid right behind him.

Then, the gun discharged.


	2. Chapter 1

**Hey all!**

**Hope you all liked my Prologue. Hope you guys found it suspenseful, at least a little bit…**

**So, this is my first FanFic, and I'm really hoping for some feedback because, believe it or not, I would love to keep writing, and it makes me feel pretty demoralized when nobody cares enough to write a little something. So, good, bad, or ugly, if you have a comment, I wanna hear it. Cool?**

**Disclaimer: I'm going to assume that you all know that I do not own Criminal Minds or any of the characters, in part or in full. I do, however own the story, the victims, and the unsub, and at least I can claim that much.**

**So, read and review, and most definitely enjoy!**

**Chapter 1**

_Two days earlier…_

"Reid?" Morgan snapped his fingers several times in Reid's face. "Wake up, there, Pretty Boy."

"Mmh?"

"You alright?"

Reid lifted his head from his desk and stifled a yawn behind his hand. "Is it morning?"

"Yeah." Morgan set a full cup of coffee on the desk in front of Reid and glanced into Reid's trash can. "Jeez, kid, were you here all night?"

Reid rubbed his eyes and looked blearily into the trash can, where five or six coffee cups rested at the bottom. "I guess so. I didn't mean to be."

"What in the world were you doing so late?" Prentiss asked from her desk, where she'd been listening.

"Mmm…" Reid looked down at his desk, at the notepad he'd been previously using as an impromptu pillow. "Research?" He lifted the notes and spotted the previous case's file open underneath. "Paperwork?"

Morgan rolled his eyes and wandered back to his desk, where he opened the first file on the top of a stack. He groaned. "Reid, could you…"

He glanced over to Reid, whose head was resting on his palm. Reid glanced over at him tiredly and raised an eyebrow.

"Right. Prentiss, w—" He turned to her, and she silenced him with a glare across the bullpen. "Never mind."

Picking up a pen, Morgan began to scrawl across the top page, filling out names, dates, and occurrences of their last case. It was only a minute or so later that Rossi appeared on the catwalk overlooking the bullpen.

"Got a case, conference room in five," he said loudly so that the three of them could hear, and he disappeared again.

Morgan immediately threw his pen down and stood. "Thank God," he said, and he thought twice. "Of course, now the work won't get done, but—"

"That's because you didn't bother to do anything last night," Reid accused as he closed his file and stood. He picked up his satchel-like shoulder bag.

"What, like you?" Morgan taunted. "I don't function well without my sleep. Reminds me of someone I know."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Reid groaned thickly as he yawned again on cue. He ran his fingers through his hair as he left the bullpen, closely followed by Prentiss, who rolled her eyes in clear irritation to their arguing.

Morgan scratched his head absentmindedly as he flipped through the remaining pages in the folder. He flipped through them again. "What the…"

Gratitude for Reid's sleepless night dawned on him as he realized that except for the lines requiring signatures, all of his paperwork was finished. Reminding himself the thank Reid later, he left the bullpen quickly and climbed the stairs onto the catwalk. Entering the conference room and closing the door, he took the open seat right in front of him between Prentiss and JJ.

"We all here?" Hotch asked as he glanced around. "Good, then, to business. JJ?"

Agent Jennifer Jareau stood and opened a file. "There have been a series of murders in the town of Franklin, Massachusetts in the past week. The victims," she pointed at the board behind her, "are all high school students. They are all male, ranging from thirteen to nineteen in age, and have varying physical features. All were stabbed to death."

"Mark Pollard was the first victim," she continued, pointing to a picture of a boy with moderate acne and short, dark brown hair, "killed on the 19th during the day. He was a fourteen-year-old freshman at Franklin High School. He was stabbed to death and his eyes were gouged."

JJ pointed to a picture briefly to show them before moving on to the next victim, whose picture was of a young-looking black boy with short—almost shaved—hair. "The second victim was Kenneth Masters. He was a junior at Tri-County High School and had just turned eighteen. He played the Cello. In addition to being stabbed to death, his lips were removed. He was killed on the 21st."

"Are you sure he was eighteen?" Morgan asked, pointing vaguely to the picture. "He doesn't look that old in the least. I'd have guessed fifteen."

"Yeah, and a junior that turned eighteen?" Reid added.

JJ explained, "According to his mother, he was a very late bloomer, and his physician recommended when he was five that his mother hold him out of school for a year, for fear that his mind wasn't fully developed. He excelled in school, sports, and music. Until his junior year, he had been a varsity wrestler."

Morgan nodded slowly. JJ continued. "The third victim, killed on the 23rd, was Kyle Wilkes. He was nineteen years old and a senior, though at Franklin High School. According to his principal, he was a B and C student who was constantly in trouble. He was also a varsity soccer player and the kicker on the varsity football team." She pointed to the picture. He was handsome, with long, golden brown hair and dark brown eyes. She then pointed to the crime scene pictures, which showed that his hands had been cut off.

"The last victim was found on the 25th." JJ pointed to the picture of the last victim, a not-so-good-looking boy with short black hair and acne. "This is Dillon Sanders, a junior at Tri-County High school. He is the first-chair trumpet in the symphonic band and marching band. He is otherwise an average student. His school record was completely clean. His hands were also cut off."

JJ turned back to face the group. "All of the victims, excepting Kyle Wilkes, attended Horrace Mann Middle School. Wilkes moved to Franklin from Minnesota between eighth grade and his freshman year."

"So…" Reid started, looking at all of the photographs carefully, "what exactly is the connection between these boys? Other than the fact that they attended the same middle school?"

The room was silent. JJ shrugged. "Not all of them did, so there doesn't appear to be any connection."

"Well, then, why is the Franklin Police Department assuming that it is the work of a serial killer?" Rossi asked.

"The MO's." JJ pointed to the photographs of the boys' wounds. "They were all stabbed to death and left in places on Tri-County High School's campus. Each of the boys would fail to attend school that day, then be found dead when school let out."

"Do the places they were dropped vary?" Reid asked.

JJ turned to the board. "Mark Pollard was found beneath the football stadium bleachers on the visitors' side, Kenneth Masters was in the football and soccer practice field, Kyle Wilkes was discovered at the top of the stadium on the home side in front of the concessions, and Dillon Sanders was outside behind the cafeteria." She looked back and crossed her arms. "Each of their respective, removed body parts were left beside them where they were found."

"What is the difference between these two schools?" Morgan asked. "They all went to the same middle school, but why were they split up between different high schools?"

"Franklin High School is a public high school serving only the students that attended Horrace Mann Middle school," Hotch filled in, "while Tri-County High School is a charter school that serves three counties. Acceptance is by application and interview only. The two schools are approximately a mile from each other."

Reid and Morgan looked at each other.

"The unsub appears to be killing every other day, so this is a case that needs to be settled quickly."

"Well, then," Morgan said, "I say that we get the heck out of here so that we can go catch ourselves yet another serial killer."

Hotch nodded. "Go get your bags, wheels up in an hour."

**Okay, so there you have it: the basis of the investigation.**

**I promise, things will pick up. It'll probably get interesting next chapter. But for now, stew on the thought about who this killer might be. It may or may not be important…**

**Be sure to review!**

**Loose Screw**


	3. Chapter 2

**Hey all!**

**Thanks so much to those of you who reviewed. That's not to say a lot of people, but hey, what else did I expect lol?**

**Thanks especially to MorganxGarcia, who pointed out a few confusing bits in the first chapter. I beg that all of you will be patient, since this is my first fanfic, and I will try to be better at clearing some things up in future chapters.**

**Oh, and be aware that I have no part in creating, designing, or otherwise manufacturing Criminal Minds or its characters.  
**

**And so, with no more ado, I give you chapter 2 of **_**No Fury**_**… Read, Review, and most definitely enjoy.**

**Chapter 2**

"Ah, Boston in November," JJ said as she gazed out the window of the federal SUV. "Isn't it wonderful?"

Reid looked out his window…toward the construction site fifty yards away, the immense amount of traffic, the clouds of exhaust and smoke billowing into the air, and, most notably, the thickly overcast sky. "It's…lovely," he said halfheartedly, and JJ chuckled.

"What the…What you doing, buddy? That light was so green!" Morgan gestured toward a red corvette two cars ahead of them. "Seriously, Hotch, can you believe this?"

"Calm yourself, Morgan, it isn't all that bad," Hotch said, gripping the steering wheel tighter. "Besides, I think I should have the rights to curse the drivers. I'm the one driving."

Morgan groaned under his breath and rubbed his brow. "Okay, I vote that we never have to fly into Logan International ever again," he complained, pronouncing every syllable clearly for Hotch. "It's a nightmare getting out of here."

Reid chuckled to himself and lowered his eyes to his novel. JJ looked over at him at the sound of pages turning every five seconds or so. She worked an ear bud into her ear as she scrolled through a list of albums on her iPod. The car began to move again, closely following one identical to it that transported Rossi, Prentiss, and Garcia, along with all of their equipment.

Then, the car lurched to a stop as Hotch hit the brakes. "Son of a…"

Hotch blew his horn twice as Reid's book slid from his hands and onto the floor. "Aw, crap," he said, and he braced himself against Hotch's seat as he leaned forward to recover it.

"What was wrong with that lane?" Hotch yelled, gesturing at a white van that was squeezing its way in front of them, putting distance between the two black SUV's. Hotch blew the horn again, letting loose a string of curses as the truck almost hit their front bumper.

Reid tried to smooth out the bent pages of his book. "Hotch, chill."

Hotch muttered under his breath and looked over at Morgan. Morgan raised an eyebrow. "I _have_ the right. I'm _driving_," he explained.

Reid and JJ smirked at each other, and Reid settled against his door, finding his page again and resuming his contented reading while JJ selected from her music. It was a half hour later that they made their way onto the highway and picked up a reasonable pace, still tailing the white van that had cut them off. Hotch readjusted the GPS screen, which estimated their time of arrival at 42 minute.

They had just reached their exit when there was a small explosion, making all four of them jump. The car swerved dangerously, and Reid lurched forward, his face slamming into the back of Hotch's chair. Hotch hit the brakes again, coasting the SUV over to the shoulder of the exit ramp. With each rotation of the wheels, the front end of the SUV dipped.

Morgan groaned in frustration. "Oh, and we _would_ blow a tire," he snapped as all four of them climbed from the SUV. Reid pinched his nose as it began to bleed. Ahead of them, the other SUV had pulled over as well as the white van.

Hotch sighed as he saw the blown tire. The rim might as well have been sitting directly on the ground for how much air was left in it. Whatever they had hit had totally flattened their tire.

Rossi walked toward them from his SUV. "You alright? Everyone alright?"

Hotch looked over to see Reid covering his face. "Reid, you okay?"

Reid looked down at his bloody hand and nodded, pinching his nose again. He knew that it wasn't broken.

"Yeah, we're good. Blew a tire," Hotch explained as he squatted down to examine it more closely. The slashes along the tread were long and many. He stood and looked out on the road to see what might have caused damage like this, but he didn't see anything.

Rossi walked toward the four as them as the man from the van jogged up behind him. "Is everyone okay?" the man asked. "I saw what happened in my rearview. Is everyone alright?"

"Yeah, yeah, we're all fine," Reid said as he pinched the bridge of his nose, stemming the flow of blood with a random napkin that he found in his pocket.

Hotch sighed again. "Dave, go on up to the precinct, they're expecting us soon." Rossi nodded. "We'll…we'll call for another car and a tow truck. None of us can fit in your car with all that equipment in there." He nodded to the other SUV, where both Garcia and Prentiss were standing, watching them.

Rossi looked over at them, too, then back at Hotch. "See you all later, then. Call me as soon as you get the new car." he said, and he walked back to his car.

"Are…are you guys feds?" the man asked as the other SUV pulled away, eyeing the badge on Reid's belt. "You going up to the station?"

Morgan looked at Hotch. "FBI," he said, "and yes, we're trying to get to the police station." He gestured toward the destroyed tire. "Trying," he repeated in annoyance.

"Well, I've got space in my van," the man said, "and if you want a ride to the station, I've got the time to get you guys there."

Hotch looked up at Reid, who shrugged. "It's going to take an hour plus to get a new car and a wrecker here from Boston," he said thickly, courtesy of a plugged nose. He removed the napkin, realizing that his nose seemed to have stopped bleeding. He sniffed a few times just to make sure.

"A team of six is better than a team of three, Hotch," JJ added. "If you guys go, I can wait for the new car and the wrecker."

Hotch debated and stood, looking directly at the man. "Well, if it isn't too far out of your way, we would be grateful to take you up on that offer."

The man smiled. "Well, great, then. You guys have any equipment that you need to take with you?"

Reid wiped his nose one last time and rushed to help Morgan move the bags from the back of their SUV to the white van. Hotch pulled out his cell phone and dialed the Boston Federal Building, explaining the situation to them, and arranging for a replacement car to be driven to their location. When he hung up, the white van was loaded and ready to leave.

"See you in a few hours, Hotch," JJ said as she sat herself in the driver's seat, turning the heat on low.

Hotch nodded and followed Reid and Morgan twenty yards ahead to the white van. There were four seats in the back of the van, two of which were occupied by Reid and Morgan. Hotch took a third seat and looked behind him into the expanse of the empty van.

"Where're the bags?" He asked.

"They're up here," the man said. "They're more secure up here." He looked back at the three of them and grinned.

Hotch slid the door shut, throwing the three of them into a semi darkness; the van had no windows in the back. He was suddenly very uncomfortable. He looked over toward Morgan, who was drumming a random rhythm against his leg, and behind him at Reid, who appeared to be dozing off for the fifth time that day. He sighed, settling into his seat.

The van continued up the exit ramp and turned to the left, crossing over the highway and continuing on a slightly winding road that lead past several plazas and strip malls before the man turned the van onto a different road, which continued deeper into a dense forest along a river.

"Hotch," Morgan said, "did you remember to call Rossi, and tell him about the change of plans?"

Hotch shook his head and pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket.

The van suddenly pulled over to the side of the road again. Reid opened his eyes and tried to see out the front window, but the man leaned over into the space between the two front seats, blocking his view.

"What are you doing?" Hotch asked uneasily, freezing in his process of dialing Rossi's number. He reached for his belt, but his gun wasn't there. Of course it wasn't, he thought, it was in his bag…in the front seat…

"Put the phone down. Now," the man ordered. "I'm sorry for this, I really am. But I needed to get somebody's attention."

Then, the three agents in the back heard the unmistakably familiar click of a cocking gun.

**Ooh, I'm getting excited…**

**So, how did y'all like it?**

**Make sure you guys review, because I seriously wanna know how I'm doing now that the story is picking up! Remember, good, bad, or ugly, if you have a comment, I wanna hear it!**

**Oh…are the chapters too short? I didn't think so, but if you guys want me to write them longer, I can most definitely do that. Just steer me in the right direction.**

**Until next time…**

**Loose Screw**


	4. Chapter 3

**Welcome to the third chapter of **_**No Fury**_**.**

**I do well realize that I am cranking these chapters out at lightning speed right now—this is my fourth in two days—but be aware that this rate won't keep up for long. I have just now become aware that school starts again in a couple weeks, and I have still got massive amounts of summer work that need to be finished before that time. That being said, I will try my absolute hardest to write chapters at an acceptable pace, but bear in mind that it may or may not always be possible, especially with marching band starting tomorrow. Be patient, and what you have coming with always come.**

**And as always, my normal disclaimer, disclaiming that I have any such thing to do with any such thing that you may see in this said following passage…except for the story, but that is completely beside the point.**

**And now, the feature presentation…**

**Chapter 3**

"Okay, the connection, people, the connection," Rossi said as he dropped his bags on the floor next to the broad conference table. He turned around and reminded himself that he was only talking to two people. "Garcia, I want you to search for anywhere or anytime these four boys had contact, including in school."

"One obscure-and-possibly-treacherous connection with whipped cream and a cherry, coming right up," Garcia said as she opened her laptop, plugging in multiple cords and boxes that would enable her to access the FBI and government databases.

Rossi ignored her unorthodox response and turned to Prentiss. "Emily, thoughts."

"Okay, well," Prentiss removed her jacket and spread the pictures out on the table. She examined them for a while. "Use of a knife suggests that the motive was personal, that it was more than a crime of opportunity." She opened four files and examined them briefly. "There is a lack of defensive wounds on any of the bodies."

"So, they knew their killer?" Rossi speculated.

Prentiss nodded. "Removal of specific body parts...what does that mean to the killer?"

Rossi looked at the photos. "They were placed next to the bodies."

"Intentionally. These were all very coordinated attacks," Prentiss said. She flashed back to the one time a man had ever assaulted her, on her college campus. His hands groping, his eyes hungry…she shook the memory from the forefront of her minds in order to focus. "Could these body parts be offensive to our unsub?"

"Offensive," Rossi repeated. "In what way?"

"Wandering hands," she said as she pointed to Dillon Sander's and Kyle Wilkes' pictures. "Offensive or abusive language. Eyes…eyes communicate a lot of things."

Rossi leaned over the pictures. "Hmm…it's plausible. So a woman?"

Prentiss nodded. "But if it was someone who had a grudge against these four boys because they were abusive, what's with the age difference?"

"Yeah, I was wondering about that," Rossi said. "A woman who was eighteen or nineteen, old enough to have a relationship with Wilkes, wouldn't have a relationship with a fourteen-year-old." He remembered the difference in high schools. "Especially if she went to one of these high schools. Why target someone in a different high school?"

Prentiss shrugged. "It almost doesn't make sense. These boys have so little in common, one would think it was random."

Rossi shook his head. "It wasn't random. These attacks are far too personal. Our unsub held a grudge against these boys, for whatever reason."

Prentiss looked back at the crime scene photos. "What about the dumping sites? These boys were clearly not attacked here; there isn't enough blood."

"Again, these places have a special meaning to our killer."

"Wouldn't our unsub have to be strong to get the bodies where she wanted them?" Prentiss compared the availability of the different locations. She had to admit that none of them would have been particularly difficult to get to with the aid of a large vehicle, even laden with a limp body. The fact remained, however, that though Mark Pollard was only 5' 4" and probably didn't weigh more than 90 lbs., Kyle Wilkes was well over six feet and was exceedingly muscular besides. "Assuming this was a woman, she would have to be either very strong or have an accomplice," she observed.

Rossi nodded. "As soon as the rest of the team gets here, we'll brief the officers on the case and issue a press statement," he said. "In the meantime, go to both high schools and talk to the principals about these four boys. I want to know who they talk to, who they hang out with, who they didn't like, who may have complained about them, anything you can get."

Prentiss nodded and stood, swinging her coat over her arms again as she left the room. Rossi stood over the pictures, putting his hands on the edge of the table and leaning on them for support as he thoroughly analyzed each photo in turn. After several minutes, he shifted his weight, reaching for his notebook. He didn't know if it mattered at all that all four of the boys had incredibly dark brown eyes, but he jotted it down anyway to file away for future reference. He looked up when he noticed that Garcia was watching him.

"Anything?" he asked her.

"Running a program now to cross reference bank accounts, cell and home phone records, and school classes since 2002—that would be Wilkes' sixth grade year—but so far I've got nada." Garcia laced her fingers under her chin as she watched her laptop screen flash through multiple files at once. She looked up at him lazily. "You get anything?"

"All the boys have brown eyes," Rossi said. "It could be a coincidence, though. Over seventy percent of Americans have brown eyes."

Garcia slid the pictures toward her to look for herself. "Yeah, but how many have eyes _that_ dark? I mean, they all look almost black."

"Yeah, I wrote it down, but I would be surprised if it turned into anything," Rossi said.

Garcia picked up Kenneth Masters' school portrait and examined it more closely. "He looks really familiar…" After a moment, she sighed and pushed the photos back. She leaned back in her chair lazily as she resumed watching her computer screen, chewing on the end of a cheap Bic pen.

Rossi picked up each picture individually and taped it to one of the white boards along the wall, writing down notes as he saw fit. Then he stood in front of the board for ten minutes, walking back and forth, muttering to himself as Garcia typed on her laptop, looking through various files on the boys individually.

"Rossi," she said, "the only connection I can find at all is that both Dillon Sanders and Kenneth Masters were in the same music appreciation course in their sophomore year. Sanders, Masters, and Pollard all had the same English teacher in middle school, in their respective years—though never at the same time—but as far as I can tell, none of these boys have ever formally met before."

Rossi looked at the board again. "So…what connects these boys?" he asked aloud. Just then, his cell phone rang. He didn't bother to look at the caller ID and immediately flipped it open. "Rossi."

"It's JJ. The car and wrecker just got here. Tell Hotch I'm coming and I'll be there soon."

Rossi looked up. " 'Tell Hotch'…Isn't he with you?"

"No, he should be there by now."

"Why should he be here by now? He doesn't have a means of getting anywhere."

"Why can't he get anywhere?"

"JJ," Rossi asked, "what are you talking about?"

The line was silent on the other end for several seconds. "Isn't…didn't Hotch and Reid and Morgan get there already?"

Rossi was losing his patience. "How could they have gotten here already?"

"The…the man with the white van, he offered to…"

"To…?" Rossi repeated, encouraging her to continue.

"He offered to give the three of them a ride to the precinct so that they could go right to work, and I would stay back to wait..."

Rossi tensed automatically, his mind running through the things that could have happened to them. "How long ago was that?"

"Right after you left an hour and a half ago. You're saying they really aren't there?" JJ asked, clearly worried.

"No, they're not here."

There was a pause. "Well, then, where are they?"

**Hehehe I feel so evil right now…**

**Okay, so now that the rest of the team knows, what do they do about it?**

**Review, peoples! You don't know how much I enjoy it!**

**Loose Screw**


	5. Chapter 4

**Oh, the suspense…**

**Thank you so much, those of you who reviewed. Still not as many as I would like to see, but hopefully this will improve as I get better at writing these.**

**Yes, I know very well that I updated earlier today, but hopefully you guys are enjoying the fact that I am updating quickly. I might also like to add that my time of two-a-days is quickly running out…school tends to do that. Besides, it's 11pm and I'm thoroughly bored out of my scull since I have nothing better to do.**

**I might also like to add, in the unlikely but possible case that someone would like to sue me for everything that I have—which is not to say that is much at all— that I do not, in any way, own Criminal Minds or its characters.**

**And now, ladies and gents, I give to you the fourth chapter of **_**No Fury**_**…**

**Chapter 4**

"What do you want from us?" Hotch asked.

"Shut up."

Hotch adjusted in his seat. He raised his handcuffed hands to scratch at the hood he wore over his head, just to see how well the man that drove them was paying attention.

"Leave it on," the man ordered him, "or this time I _will_ blow the kid's brains out."

Hotch sighed. He and Morgan had willingly allowed themselves to be handcuffed—with government issued handcuffs, they'd noticed—and blindfolded with scratchy, black hoods when the man had aimed his handgun into Reid's face. Whether or not the man got what he wanted, Hotch had decided quickly—and almost sub-consciously—that he would rather allow him to kidnap them than to allow him to hurt Reid.

So he settled instead on profiling their captor, more to pass the time than anything else, highlighting the important parts in his head.

The man was Caucasian and in his forties, he guessed. _He was determined_. Hotch could see that in his face and set jaw before he'd been blindfolded_. He was scared and nervous_, which Hotch could tell from the occasional quiver in his voice and took it to mean that he had never kidnapped anyone before. He had probably never committed any felony before in his life, and since he seemed to have access to handcuffs and to have knowledge about using the weapon he held, he assumed _that he was in some branch of law enforcement_.

Hotch heard a rustle beside him, followed almost immediately by a metallic clink.

"Kid, you can't pick those cuffs," the man snapped, and he scoffed. "I'd like to see you try without a pair of glasses."

Had Reid been wearing his glasses? He hadn't thought so. Nevertheless, it described to Hotch that this man knew the easiest way to pick a pair of handcuffs. Certainly not your everyday civilian. He continued his profile.

_He was desperate_. For whatever reason the man had kidnapped them, it wasn't for business or for money. His motives were much deeper than that. Hotch could see in his eyes a sadness that he had felt himself. He had heard in his voice—try as the man might have to convince them otherwise—as sense of urgency, a sense of pleading.

Hotch couldn't describe it any other way. He had _pleaded_ with them to get in the van. Lured them in. It may have been that there were three of them and only one of him, but he had been kind to them the entire time. He could have brought a whole army if he wanted to, threatened them, taken them by force. He hadn't. He wanted something from them, something that he couldn't get for himself.

And, what reassured him most of all, _he had blindfolded them_. Hotch knew that you didn't blindfold someone if you planned to kill them later. He didn't want to hurt them. Or at least, he didn't want to kill them, but Hotch knew that both were true anyway. The way he pointed his gun at them, for starters: he was trained to use it, but not trained to kill with it. But he didn't want to underestimate him. Whatever his motives, if he was willing to kidnap three FBI agents, he probably wouldn't hesitate to shoot them if it meant getting what he wanted.

Hotch sighed again. They had to have been driving for almost an hour now, and indeed, after another few minutes, Hotch felt the van turn off their road and onto a gravel one. Only a minute or so later, they parked. Hotch heard the unmistakable sound of the emergency/parking brake, and the engine turned off.

The side door slid open again. "Out," the man demanded roughly, and a hand pulled him out of the van by the upper arm. Then his back slammed into the van as the man pushed him backward. "Stay."

Hotch remained motionless as he heard the other two being helped out of the van in a similar fashion, and the van door slid shut again. Then he was jerked forward by the arm, and he stayed where he was put. Only a moment later, something cool and hard was jammed into his chest. He knew it was the pistol.

"I think it best that you all know that you are in a single file line. I might also tell you that your friend—Hotch, is it?"

Hotch nodded.

"Your friend Hotch has a pistol in his gut. Try anything remotely funny, and he is the first to go."

The man's threat resonated in their heads as the man yanked him forward by the arm again, and a pair of hands grabbed onto the back of his coat for guidance. They walked blindly, led by the man, until they could feel the air quality change. It was warmer, dryer, and it smelled more musty than anything else. A hardwood floor creaked as the four of them walked across it. Hotch remembered it all in stunning clarity.

"Steps," the man growled.

Hotch felt forward with his foot until he felt the drop. He stepped down slowly, one at a time while his mind raced. A basement? Why didn't he do anything? _He was a federal agent, for Christ's Sake_! He should be able to do something!

But as he kept stepping down—deeper and deeper under the Earth, he knew—he couldn't force himself to do a single thing about it. Not only was he both blindfolded and handcuffed, he had a gun in his chest. For all he knew, the bullet may well go right through him and into whoever was behind him, which he assumed to be Reid. He sighed internally. He couldn't do a thing and he knew it. Maybe with some coordination and a plan between the three of them…but wishful thinking wasn't getting him anywhere. Those were the things he knew he did not have on his side.

The floor beneath him changed, from wood to what felt like concrete. He could feel the cool, dampness of it through his shoes. He took several steps with the man pulling him by the arm, aiming a gun into his diaphragm, but then he lurched forward as the man all but threw him to the ground. The two men behind him fell on top of him, and there they lay, the cold of the basement sinking through their clothes. A small metallic ping was heard, then the heavy squeal of hinges, and finally, a loud slam. A lock clicked.

Hotch pushed somebody off him in frustration and reached up to rip off his hood. He stood up and looked around. They were in a basement; that much was for sure. More importantly, though, they were in a cell.

Natural light streamed in through a northern-facing window, high in the wall, though plants and weeds on the outside covered over half of it. Cinderblock bricks that were painted periwinkle rose eight feet up the wall to the ceiling, which was of musty wooden rafters holding up the floor above them. The three remaining walls, though of cinderblock, remained unpainted. The door through which they had just been shoved was iron and completely solid but for a small, rectangular hatch that was closed tightly from the outside.

Hotch walked slowly to the door and touched it with both hands, since they were still cuffed together. He leaned against it, trying to control an outburst of frustration he felt rising, but he could not. Letting loose an angered yell, he banged on the door with all his might, bruising both fists, hoping that the man might come back so that he could try to strangle him. He didn't, and it was probably a good thing, he thought as his pent-up energy left him. It was a long minute before he calmed down enough to face his colleagues, and he made sure to give the door one last kick for good measure.

Morgan and Reid had both pulled off their hoods and stood watching him silently. Reid's face was bloody once again from a second nosebleed, this time induced by stress, though the freshly broken membrane in his nasal cavity hadn't helped in the least. Morgan absently twisted one of the cuffs around his wrist.

Hotch bent down to scoop up the handcuff key he knew the man had dropped there on purpose and quickly unlocked his own handcuffs without thinking about it, throwing them down to the floor forcefully. He passed the key to Morgan as he walked by, examining the very edges of the room. There were no cracks, no weaknesses in the walls, no place that they could use to their advantage, at least not with what they had to work with.

Lastly, he examined a pair of plastic, five-gallon paint buckets in one corner. One was full of fresh water with a cheap plastic cup sitting next to it. The other was empty, and he didn't need to guess what it was for. Out of courtesy—and the lack of something productive to do—he picked up the empty bucket and moved it to the other side of the cell. Then he sank down against the back wall, where the other two were now seated silently. For hours, they sat there in silence. No one had anything to say. They had been played like a fiddle, and they knew it.

It was amazing how much detail you could hear in a basement when nothing moved. Hotch knew that Reid had fallen asleep quickly— exhausted by his lack of solid sleep the night before—because of his breathing patterns. He had seen Morgan close his eyes a while ago, but Hotch knew he wasn't asleep because his breathing wasn't nearly as slow and even as Reid's.

He counted how many hours it had been since the briefing in the conference room that morning. It seemed like it had been days ago, but he counted the hours anyway. It couldn't have been much later than one o'clock when they'd arrived here, and considering the light was beginning to fade outside, he estimated that it was four o'clock now. He rested his head back against the wall. He was so bored…

It was an hour later that he heard movement and looked over to see Morgan stand and stretch. He walked over to the empty bucket and used it, completely unashamed and unembarrassed. Hotch averted his eyes dutifully until Morgan was finished, not caring in the least. They were all grown men, after all. Morgan then crossed the cell and picked up the blue plastic cup, dipping it into the water and drinking it. A minute later, he sat back down next to Hotch again, pulling his coat tighter around himself.

Hotch suddenly became aware of the cold creeping up the walls and through his coat to his spine. He almost shivered. He couldn't remember the last time he had shivered. It was slightly unnerving, and he too adjusted to pull his coat closer to him, shoving his hands into his armpits. He knew when Morgan glanced his way, and when both of their stomachs growled simultaneously, they even cracked a smile for each other.

A mutual understanding passed between the two of them, and suddenly, nothing was any longer about their professional life, their careers, or the strict barrier that had existed between all team members in the past, confining themselves from one another. Even though Hotch was far more experienced than Morgan was, seniority suddenly didn't matter anymore. Their life had become, for the foreseeable future, much more personal, and nothing remained private any longer.

Hotch sighed to himself as he accepted the change, and he felt relieved that he wasn't necessarily expected to be the perfect Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Hotchner any longer. Super-Hotch. He smiled to himself at the name…but all the same, he had felt like that had been expected of him. Maybe he was just human, kidnapped and—admittedly—slightly afraid. Not that he should fall to pieces. He had no intention of doing that. But maybe he didn't have to try so hard. He closed his eyes.

He suddenly jerked awake when a small bulb above their heads turned on. Rubbing his eyes, Hotch leaned forward to look at their single window, which was now almost completely dark. He must have dozed off. Then he heard feet on the stairs, approaching their cell. Hotch looked over to see that Morgan, too, was tense, and even Reid was waking up. The footsteps stopped outside their door.

"All three of you, get back against the wall!"

The small rectangular hatch opened, and he saw the man's face looking into the cell through it, making sure there was no danger to him as he entered. The hatch closed again, and a few clicks later, the iron door squealed open on its rusting hinges.

"I know you three must be hungry," the man said gruffly…but Hotch knew that there was at least a small grain of kindness and caring there too. "I made some sandwiches. Got six, here. Three turkey and three ham."

The man set the platter of sandwiches on the floor, but before he could stand back up, Morgan began to lunge forward. Whether he was eager for the sandwiches or trying to subdue, the man, Hotch didn't know himself, but the man quickly drew a pistol from the waistband of his jeans and aimed it directly at Morgan. Morgan froze, crouched awkwardly on his hands and knees.

"I have one simple rule when I come in here," the man said edgily, "and that is that everyone stays put against that wall until I leave."

Morgan glared daggers at him before he slowly lowered himself back down against the wall. The man lowered his weapon and began again to leave, backing out of the cell slowly, keeping a sharp eye on all three of them.

As he grabbed the door to slam it closed behind him again, the man said, "It is six o'clock now." He pointed to the single bulb above their heads in the center of their little cell, which emitted a dim glow that wouldn't have been quite enough for the small space but was sufficient under the circumstances. "This light will go out at nine." With that, he left the room. His footsteps could be heard all the way back through the basement, back up the stairs, and then…nothing. Silence.

Morgan leapt forward again, grabbing the first sandwich he could get his hands on. Hotch picked up the platter and passed it to Reid, who carefully selected a turkey sandwich. Hotch chose one for himself and settled to eating in complete silence.

**Well?**

**I really wanna hear the reviews on this one. Not that I don't on others, but I really want to know what y'all think about my version of Hotch's thoughts. I just thought it was an interesting take on what he thinks about being the "All-powerful Hotch". Lot of fluff? Maybe. But perhaps needed in order to develop the story…**

**Yeah, I know that not everyone will be happy with it…or happy with this whole chapter, maybe…but I gotta think that someone agrees with me here.**

***Yawn* okay it is now 2:30am, and I am thoroughly wiped out. You guys had better know that I love all y'all to stay up this late...this early...whichever...*yawn* just to post another chapter.**

**So be sure you review, or I might not have the confidence to continue…**

**Loose Screw**


	6. Chapter 5

**OMG I have actually waited more than twenty-four hours to update! That's like a record!**

**Ok, sorry, moment of spasticity there. I just—and I mean, **_**just**_**—got home from marching band practice. Billy Joel this year ****… anyway, I know it's been a little longer than usual, but honestly, it is absolutely amazing what three days without sleep can do to you. So I got like fourteen plus hours of sleep last night, and I am ready to write.**

**I am so lovin' the reviews, people. Keep them coming because it is so inspiring to know that people care enough about my work to write a little something about it, even if it is bad. Special shout out to criminalxxxmindsxxxfreak and Tomboy13 for the excellent feedback about Hotch's POV. I hope I can use it more in later chapters.**

**I'm definitely hoping to answer some of the questions that you may or may not have at this point. You know like **_**Where are they?**_** and **_**Who is the man who captured them?**_** and **_**How does the kidnapping relate to the case?**_** etc….Maybe not all in this chapter, but at some point. I promise.**

**And I might as well mention, since I've gone to all the trouble to hit the 'Enter' key the extra time, that I do not and will never—despite my wildest dreams, my dizziest daydreams, and my wishes upon a shining star—own Criminal Minds or the characters contained within its humble domain.**

**I think I've gilded the lily enough. Read on…you know you want to.**

**Chapter 5**

JJ paced nervously back and forth across the conference room. "Garcia, did you trace their phones?"

"I already tried, JJ, but they're all turned off."

"Well, do something!"

"Pull their credit and account history," Rossi suggested. "See if there are any records of expense since eleven o'clock this morning."

"Would our unsub be stupid enough to use any of them?" JJ leaned over the back of Garcia's chair, watching her type a series of commands that she couldn't follow.

Rossi picked up the white board pen and made notes of the white van beneath the photographs. "Unlikely, but I like to be assured that we covered our bases."

Garcia's fingers flew over the keyboard smoothly as she checked each of the possible accounts that could have been accessed. "Nothing."

"JJ, did you see the license plate?"

JJ's head bowed. "I didn't think to look at it. I didn't know he was our unsub."

"Were there any markings on the van? Did you notice the manufacturer?"

JJ shook her head. "The van was plain. No graphics at all. And…it was a GMC, maybe?" She pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to remember specifically. In her head, she saw the van pull out in front of them in Boston. "I'm fairly he drove a GMC."

Rossi began to scribble down the information. He had begun to write the details about the van when he suddenly froze. "He?" He stepped to the other end of the board, observing his earlier profiling notes. He rubbed his brow as he thought about the facts…

"Rossi?" JJ walked up behind him.

Rossi grunted in frustration and flipped the board over to the other side, which was clean of notes. "We're dealing with two different unsubs," he said.

"Two?"

Rossi nodded as he began rewriting the notes about the van in the upper left-hand corner. "The unsub in our case is almost certainly between 18 and 25 years of age and, more importantly, female. Specifically, female with a grudge for a specific characteristic in high-school-aged boys."

JJ watched at Rossi skipped a few inches at the top and began writing notes on the kidnapper. "Well…we _have_ seen his face. We can issue a report with an accurate sketch."

"Yeah, but why them?" Rossi said, stepping back and looking in no place in particular as he thought aloud to himself. "Why Hotch? Why Morgan, or Reid? Was it somebody in particular or a selection of opportunity?" He started wandering around the room, spinning the pen between his fingers. "What does he hope to accomplish? What does he stand to gain?"

Prentiss blew through the door then. "Okay, what do we have on this guy?" She threw her jacket over the back of a chair and came to stand behind Rossi. "I was thinking…you mentioned over the phone that our unsub may or may not be targeting men with brown eyes. Our guys all have brown eyes. Morgan's are particularly dark. I know they aren't high-school-aged, but Reid isn't far off—"

"It's a different unsub."

Prentiss froze, then looked over at JJ. "Two? Are they together?"

"No." Rossi turned around and tossed the pen on the table. "We don't think the case and the kidnapping are linked at all."

Prentiss examined the board, making mental notes, making connections in the profiler part of her mind. "Is…that a good thing or a bad thing?"

"Depends on how you look at it."

"I'll…go talk to the press about this guy. I mean, we don't have anything to run on so far, but we have seen his face and his van." JJ started for the door.

"JJ," Rossi called after her, "don't tell them that the three men are FBI agents. And give them the details about our other unsub. It should make the ten o'clock news."

"Got it."

Prentiss turned the white board over to see what Rossi had written about their original unsub, nodding to herself in agreement as she read the text. She looked at the clock over the door. "It's almost nine. Do you suppose she has another victim?"

Rossi looked up from the table, where he was examining a few other photos that he hadn't taped to the board. "Our original unsub?"

Prentiss nodded.

Rossi stood up. "Well, let's run through her routine in reverse. She drops off her victim during the school day, but not too long before school ends. The victim hasn't been at school all day, so she would have had to take him between the time he leaves school and the time he gets to school the next morning."

"Do any of them have missing person reports?"

Rossi looked quickly through the files, but Garcia answered first, having typed the keywords into her database. "No reports, which makes sense since the police doesn't consider a person 'missing' until they've been gone for twenty-four hours."

Rossi nodded. "And these boys were killed and dumped before then," he finished. "The police took the parents' statements, though. Three of the families say that their kid didn't come home the day before they were found dead at Tri-County High."

"What about the fourth?"

"Kyle Wilkes had football practice late the night he went missing, then called him mother to say that he wanted to go out with some friends. Wanted to get dinner, see a movie…He told her he would be out late, and she went to bed early that night," Rossi said. "At least, that's what the report says. Prentiss, I want you to go to each of the boys' families tomorrow and get their statements."

"Yes, sir," she said.

The door opened again, and all three of them looked up automatically. JJ came back into the room, followed closely by an officer. "Guys, this just came for us."

The officer tossed a thick, yellow envelope onto the table for them. All four of the team members crowded around it.

"No return address," Rossi noted. "Means he delivered it himself. Did you see the vehicle he came in?" he asked, pointing to the officer behind him.

"No, sir, he came in himself."

"This son of a gun is playing with us," Prentiss said angrily.

"Yeah, or he just doesn't know better." Rossi flipped the package, which had been marked _FBI BAU_, over to that he could open it. A face appeared beside his, and he turned to glare at the officer. The officer mumbled an apology and shuffled out of the room.

The package contained several sheets of paper, several photographs, and another, regular-sized envelope. Rossi picked up the envelope and opened it as Prentiss and JJ sorted through the photos.

_Dear BAU,_

_A thirteen-year old girl went missing over a week ago. She was one of four. Our case, which had been handled previously by the Franklin Police Department, had been submitted to the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit based in Quantico Virginia._

_You rejected and redirected our case. Because of that, there are eight parents and two step-parents that may not ever see their children again. I have, therefore, kidnapped three of your agents. I have no intention to harm them in any way. However, they will not be released until the BAU solves our case, no matter the outcome._

Rossi finished reading the note and sighed. JJ passed him a photo, one that showed three men lying on a damp-looking concrete floor, their hands cuffed in front of them and black hoods over their heads. They couldn't see their faces, but it was easy enough to tell who each of them was. Morgan was obvious because of his darker skin, and Reid beside him—rolled so far onto his side that he might have been on his face—was wearing the ever-present sweater vest under his open jacket. Hotch was the only one who looked like he might be attempting to stand. He was starting to sit up, and his hands were reaching into the air as though to grab something. Rossi sighed again.

"This is…" Prentiss started, trying to find the right words as she read through the letter.

"Very formal," JJ finished, reading over her shoulder. "What does that mean?"

"He cares. A lot." Rossi fished through the other photos, which were of four early-teenage girls. "He really does want us to take this case."

"So…what if we say that we won't work on the case unless he gives us our men back?" JJ asked.

"How? We don't have a way of getting in touch with him." Prentiss picked up one of the pictures. "But if we found a way, what if we said that we couldn't do it unless we had the three of them back?"

"I don't think he's that stupid," Rossi said. "He made a point to tell us that he won't hurt our men, but he does seem to know that we will need motivation. Without motivation, we just leave, his case never gets solved."

"So what do we do, then?"

Rossi looked at the notes, running through every possibility and all the details in his head. He sifted through the photos, looking at what he had to go on, not including the files he knew the police station would have.

"We have too little on this guy," Garcia said. "We wouldn't be able to find him without more about who he is."

"Yes, but we have seen his face," JJ pointed out.

"Honey," Garcia scoffed, "I work miracles every day, but I'm not that good. A face is not enough. We need a name, a license plate, a residence, anything, but more than just a face."

"She's right," Rossi said. "If we had anything else on this guy, we might be able to get Hotch and Morgan and Reid back, but we don't."

"So what should we do?" Prentiss asked. "We potentially have three cases and…" she looked at her watch, "…eighteen hours until our _original_ unsub dumps a body. She might have already killed another victim by now."

Rossi looked at the board absently. "We play his game." He turned to the rest of them. "I think this guy is serious. He doesn't want to hurt them if we play by his rules, but if someone he really and truly cares about is missing without a trace, he might be willing to. I also think that, given we work the case, he will let them go. So we play his game."

Rossi walked back to the table and pulled the new collection of photos over to the other end of the conference table and began to spread them out neatly. "Prentiss, you will take over that case." He picked up the note. "I'm going to solve this one."

**Right. So. Little trouble with that picture, right?**

**Review, review, review. I can't tell you how much it helps.**

**Loose Screw**


	7. Chapter 6

**Hey again!**

**Yes, it is I. I have returned. Hopefully you are all glad to see me. From your reviews, it sounds like you are. Moving on…**

**Oh. As always, I do not own Criminal Minds, yadda yadda, blah blah blah…I hope you all get the general outline of the picture by this point.**

**Read, review, and most definitely enjoy!**

**Chapter 5**

Hotch was still awake by morning.

The sun was beginning to rise and shed a half-light into their basement cell when footsteps made their way closer to them. Looking over at Reid and Morgan, Hotch wondered to himself whether he should wake them or let them wake of their own accord. He decided on the latter.

The oversized peep hole opened, and Hotch saw a face beyond it, looking in, checking on them before the hole was closed again and the door squealed open. Morgan stirred. The first thing that Hotch saw was the pistol sheathed on the man's hip, as it usually was. The man came in silently, putting a plate of assorted fruit on the ground in the middle of the cell, as well as three stacked, Styrofoam cups and a thermos. When the man stood, he looked at the three of them—almost sadly, Hotch noted—before he turned and left again.

Hotch didn't want to move. The distinct scent of fresh coffee, however, wafted over to him, and it was more tempting than ever. The basement had been freezing the night before.

Getting up and stretching his stiff muscles, Hotch picked up a banana from the platter and poured himself a cup of the coffee. He ate standing. It was not the best coffee he'd ever had, but it would most definitely suffice. Morgan rolled onto his hands and knees and followed suit groggily. The movement woke Reid, who had been rather close to Morgan throughout the night for heat. Hotch pretended he hadn't noticed.

Reid yawned widely. "Is that coffee?"

Morgan chuckled, and Hotch could not help but crack a smile. "Yeah, and it's hot."

Reid sat up and yawned again, shivering and pulling his coat tighter. Morgan passed him a cup of coffee, and the three of them warmed in silence. Black coffee wasn't Reid's first choice, but considering the man—their kidnapper—had given them any food at all, let alone a thermos of coffee, was almost astounding.

Between the three of them, the platter of fruit was almost completely devoured, the thermos of coffee emptied. The man returned what Hotch assumed to be an hour later to collect the platter, and he also took with him the two buckets. He returned ten minutes later, one bucket filled with fresh water, the other emptied and cleaned.

There was nothing to do. All three of them were utterly bored all morning. There wasn't even much to talk about. That was, until the man threw a pack of playing cards through the hole in the door some time later. The sun had been shining strongly through the window, but none of them had the faintest idea what time it was.

So they played cards. They played poker. Reid won. They played Gin Rummy. Reid won. He tried to convince them that it had mostly to do with the fact that he was raised within the limits of Las Vegas and that he was, in fact, a certified genius. Morgan told him that was BS. When they decided instead to play 21, Hotch won the majority of the time, and Reid told them all that this was proof that he was not cheating. He hadn't been the dealer, though, so it made perfect sense to all present that he simply hadn't cheated because he hadn't had the resources. Hotch pretended—as he always did, so not the ruin Reid's fun—that Reid's eyes were not as dilated as they were, that his inflection was not as distinctly different as it was. Morgan would never have forgiven the boy genius.

It was a few hours later that Morgan grew sick of getting beat at cards, and Hotch wanted nothing more than to sit back and profile their captor. They all sat at the back of the cell for another hour—Morgan chuckling to himself every so often, Reid practicing sleight-of-hand tricks with the deck of cards, and Hotch deep in thought over how the man was behaving and why he might be doing so—until footsteps were, once again, heard on the stairs they knew to be on the other side of the basement.

The door opened with its usual loud announcement. The man had a platter of roast beef sandwiches which, admittedly, smelled good from where the three men sat. Hotch looked to see—even though he knew beforehand that it would be there—the gun on the man's hip. He wondered for the millionth time if it was actually loaded.

"It's noon," the man said simply. He put the platter down on the floor. "I thought that you might want to know that I contacted your team last night with details for your release."

"What might they be?" Hotch asked.

The man contemplated his answer before he spoke, contempt suddenly lacing his voice. "It is now up to your team to determine all of your fates."

"What do you want from us?" Hotch asked, standing up in place.

The man immediately reacted, pulling the handgun from his belt and holding it at ease, against his chest, angling downward slightly, but ready to use should it be necessary. He had had training with that weapon. "Don't move," he ordered.

The other two reacted quickly to the movement of the firearm, jumping to their feet and crowding closer to Hotch. Morgan even reached for his currently-nonexistent weapon reflexively.

"We can't do anything for you if we don't know what you want," Hotch said, raising his hands in defense slightly as he reminded himself that he was, in fact, completely unarmed.

"Stay there!" The man brought his gun up and ready to fire, stepping his right foot back slightly reflexively. Definitely trained.

"What do you want from us?" Hotch repeated.

"I want your attention!" The man growled.

"You have it."

The man nodded quickly, clearly debating with himself whether he should make his intentions known. He bought himself a few more seconds. "And do I have yours?"

He pointed the handgun in Morgan's face, who had widened his stance, had stepped closer to the man, in defense. Morgan nodded.

"And yours?" Reid's eyes widened, and he nodded. "Good. How many requests does your team recieve per week?"

Hotch shrugged. "I don't know…Fifty, maybe?"

Reid nodded in agreement. "We get hundreds of cases submitted to the BAU every year. You have to understand that we can really only take forty of them or so per year, considering the time that every case takes and—"

"Zip it, Reid," Morgan muttered, recognizing the irritated look that the man was giving him as one that he himself gave Reid on a regular basis.

The man sighed in clear frustration. "And who chooses the cases you take?"

"We decide as a team," Hotch said.

Obviously too nervous to keep his mouth shut for long, Reid continued, "We discuss, throw ideas on the table…but what does this have to do with why you're holding us here?"

"I didn't ask _you_," the man snapped, "but I wonder: do any of you remember _discussing_ the case of one Sarah Kinney?"

The three agents look slowly toward one another. They remembered the case clearly. They had argued over it for almost an hour. The women insisted that they take it while Hotch and Reid were unconvinced that it was worth their time and effort. If they had known was would happen, the irony would have made them laugh until they cried. As it was, the situation wasn't so laughable.

"Yes," Hotch answered slowly, cautiously, "but we dismissed the case because it lacked the support that the kidnappings were linked through a single person with a single motive."

"The MO's didn't match up in the least, and there were no similarities between the victims," Reid reeled off. "For most serial killers, the way they kill is the same. It's very rigid for a very good reason, and they wouldn't change unless they had a good reason to. If a link between these victims existed—"

"Hey, pipsqueak! Shut up already!" The man aimed the gun in Reid's face again, and Reid immediately fell silent. The man glared at Reid as though he wanted to pull the trigger anyway.

"What about Sarah Kinney?" Hotch asked, attempting to take the pressure off Reid.

The man looked over to Hotch, a murderous glare on his face, and he looked like he might fire the gun in anger after all. Hotch, however, recognized the look. It was not of pure anger and rage, but hurt as well. He knew what the man was going to say before he said it. He had gone through it all before.

"What about her?" the man shouted. "What about her? She's my daughter, that's what about her!

The man shook in fury for a long minute before Hotch decided that it was safe to speak again. He did, after all, now have two of his team members relying on him to keep them safe.

"Sir…I respect your willingness to go to such lengths to get your daughter back—I really do understand; I have a son of my own—but it will do you no good to shoot us. It will do you no good to hold us here any longer. None of this is our fault. Even if we do take up the case now, we might not be able to do anything for you or your daughter," he said. He had said the wrong thing.

"You…you might not be able…"

Reid looked at Morgan. Morgan looked at Hotch. Hotch stared down the barrel of the gun. The man holding it could contain himself no longer.

"How could you say things like that? How could you stand there, with a child of your own, and say something like that? How could you live with yourself, knowing that you—"

"You cannot—" Hotch started, trying to go back on what he had said, but he could not.

"—_knowing_ that you sentenced my daughter to death?" The man jerked the handgun in Hotch's face. Hotch didn't flinch. The man silently shook in fury for several seconds before he calmed, a tear forming in the corner of his eye. "It wasn't your call to make."

"Sir, we don't mean you any harm," Morgan said as he stepped forward, gaining confidence in the fact that the man truly didn't seem to mean any harm to them in turn. "We do our jobs—and we do them well—but it is physically impossible to save everyone. It would be suicide for us to even try."

The man glanced at Morgan, then back at Hotch. He closed his eye and the tear dropped.

"So please, drop your weapon," Morgan continued, raising his hands as he stepped closer. "We will do what we can, if you will let us go." He placed his hand on the barrel of the gun and started to pull it down.

The man's eyes snapped open. He growled as he tried to jerk the gun back up, taking Morgan by surprise. Morgan's hand slipped from the barrel, and he grabbed for the man's wrist as he tried to recover control. The man pulled and twisted, forcing Morgan's arms to the side and trying to pry his hands away. The struggle went to the concrete floor as each man pulled on the gun, and Hotch was sure that the man would be willing to use it if he regained full control of it. He started to move in to help when he saw that Morgan was beginning to lose, and he knew that Reid was right behind him.

Then, the gun discharged.

Twice.

**Ooh, the suspense is killing you, isn't it?**

**So, read on and see what happens. I am so awake right now, I might even write the next part tonight. It might be a few hours, though, so don't stay up as late as I will. I hear it's really bad for your health.**

**So, review! I mean it! Review, review, review! It's the little button that says "Review"!**

**Until next time…**

**Loose Screw**


	8. Chapter 7

**Ok, so obviously the "Let's update twice last night" plan didn't work out. I wanted to, and I really didn't get much sleep last night, either, but writing whump stories turns out to be a lot harder than one would think. Nothing good came to mind until this morning.**

**And, as always, I do not in any way own Criminal Minds or its characters…geez, I do say that with such enthusiasm, don't I?**

**So, with no more ado, Ladies and Gents, the seventh chapter of **_**No Fury**_** has arrived!**

**Chapter 7**

On any given day, a gunshot is loud. Hotch had shot a number of different weapons in his life. A .22 rifle was most definitely the most quiet, a shotgun being much more noisy, but a 9mm pistol was perhaps the loudest he had ever had to deal with.

Not that he wasn't used to it. In his line of work, all he could do was flash back to the numerous times he had used his own weapon, and none of those occasions had been what he would consider pleasant circumstances.

Nevertheless, within a ten foot by ten foot cubicle, built solely of concrete and cinderblock, and in anticipation of a brawl over an uncontrolled 9mm pistol, these two shots were some of the loudest SSA Aaron Hotchner had ever heard.

Morgan's immediate response was to release his hold on the man and cover his ears, teetering and falling over as his equilibrium was disrupted by such a sudden and loud explosion so near to his eardrum. Hotch rushed forward, fully expecting a gush of blood, but there was none.

"Morgan, are you okay?"

Morgan didn't hear him. His shocked eardrums were unwilling to vibrate with Hotch's voice, and it didn't help much that the waves of the two gunshots seemed to reverberate through the concrete. He guessed anyway, though, and answered him, "I'm good, Hotch, I'm cool."

Hotch sighed in relief and looked down at the man nearby, fully intending to take advantage of the fact that he seemed too shocked to react. The man, however, was not looking toward them. On the contrary, he was staring in complete confusion and shock to the last remaining person in the cell with him, and Hotch traced his eyes, too.

Reid was standing over them, his mind still clearly torn between moving to safety and leaping into the fight. Hotch could almost see his genius mind thinking through possible scenarios, automatically calculating chances and probabilities that, Hotch could also see, their youngest member didn't want to think about. Still, as Reid stumbled forward on a weakened leg, Hotch's surprise couldn't have been matched by anyone else's.

Hotch and Morgan leapt up immediately and ran to Reid's side. Morgan threw his jacket aside and pulled off his shirt, holding it to Reid's wounded leg, and Reid gasped in pain.

"Reid? Look, Reid, it's a scratch," Morgan said as he lifted the shirt, revealing nothing more than a deep, red gouge in his skin beneath the torn up khakis . It was bleeding severely and would need medical attention, but it was, if anything, a very shallow through-and-through shot. "You're going to be fine Reid."

Hotch folded up his jacket into a pillow and slid it beneath Reid's head and gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. Reid yelped in pain again, tightly screwing his eyes shut, and Hotch assumed that it was because Morgan had applied firm pressure to his leg, but he quickly noticed that Reid's attention was nowhere near his leg.

"Reid, calm down. Where is it?" Hotch shook him gently. "Reid…Spencer, don't hold your breath. Come on, breathe."

Reid released the air from his lungs in a painful gasp. "It…hurts…"

"I know, Spencer, I know it does. Where?"

Reid reached his arm across his body to Hotch's hand, where it rested on his left shoulder. Hotch raised his hand to see, to his surprise and horror, that Reid had caught the second shot after all.

"Morgan, give me that!" He nearly grabbed Morgan's bloody shirt from him and pressed it over a spot that was only slightly darker than the dark maroon of Reid's sweater vest. Reid yelped again and his breathing was more labored than it had been before.

"Spencer, I'm so sorry," Morgan said, over and over again. The words barely registered in Hotch's mind.

The door suddenly slammed shut again, and Hotch looked up to see that the man was gone. He practically leapt across their cell and banged on the door with all his might, screaming for the man to come back down and face them. He hoped that he would. He would bludgeon the man to death right here, right now.

How dare he? Why was this happening to them? Why was this happening to Reid? Hadn't the kid gone through enough in his lifetime, let alone since he joined the BAU? Hotch kicked the door with everything he had and stood back to look at his. His heart pounded in his ears, the sound of his blood rushing abnormally fast blocking everything out until one sound made its way through to his mind: the sound of Reid's ragged breathing growing more labored with each passing second.

"Reid, Reid, it's okay, you're gonna be okay," Morgan was saying as Reid groaned. "Come on, Spencer, look at me."

Hotch walked slowly back to the reality of what was happening and bent down near Reid's head. "Spencer, you have to open your eyes," he said. He didn't know why the boy would listen to him, but Reid scrunched up his face in agony as he squinted up at the both of them.

Reid groaned loudly between clenched teeth. "Hotch…the room is spinning."

"I know, Spencer. Can you do something for me? Breathe with me." Hotch breathed in and out slowly, audibly, so that Reid could follow him. "In and out. Nice and slow. Can you do that?"

Reid's breathing slowed. His gasps of pain were much less frequent as his focus was redirected. All he thought of was breathing in, then breathing out. He groaned softly as Morgan lifted his shoulder ever so slightly as he searched for an exit wound, but his pain was far less than it had been.

Hotch breathed with him, slowly and evenly, impressed by Reid's focus and willingness to do what they told him to do, until he heard Morgan cursed softly. They stared at each other over Reid's limp body and leaned their heads together.

"Hotch, there's no exit wound," Morgan said, just loud enough that Reid couldn't hear them. "He's got a slug lodged in his shoulder."

Hotch cursed and looked down at Reid's young face. Reid was still struggling not to hyperventilate, not to move so as to adjust his wounds. "He needs medical attention, and soon," he said.

"Yeah, but how do we get out of here?"

Reid coughed once and winced. Hotch and Morgan both looked down at him, and Reid stared back. "I'm fine," he said, but the other two looked at each other; they knew that it wasn't as true as he had tried to make it sound.

Hotch ran a series of ideas through his head, each more unlikely and impossible than the last, for several minutes until they heard quiet footsteps approaching again. The rectangular hatch in the door opened, and all the men could see through it was a digital camera pointed in their direction. Morgan's face distorted in fury, and he started forward, but Hotch's strong hand stopped him. They let him take the picture. Hotch knew where it was going.

"What did you stop me for?" Morgan muttered angrily.

"If he takes that picture, it gets to the rest of the team," Hotch explained, and Morgan quickly caught on to his plan, however crude it was.

"Motivation," he said. "That's what the photo is for, and if it works, Reid gets to a hospital that much faster."

Hotch nodded. "I can't see anything else we can do."

He looked down at Reid, who moaned as Morgan shifted his weight, the energy transferring to the tender spot on which Morgan's fingers pressed. He assessed Reid's condition, eyeing the gash on his leg, watching the blood run steadily, if more slowly, from his shoulder. He took note of the recognition that it might become a habit by the time they got out of here.

_Great_, he thought_. Not only am I now profiling myself, but I have to be negative about it_. Although, in his defense, he had to admit that it looked like a distinct and realistic possibility, and nothing was better in situations like these than the ability to cast aside the inclination to think positively and gain the strength to think realistically instead.

He felt like a training handbook.

"Hotch?" Reid's voice was raspy and dry, and he noticed that it was laced with pain as well.

"What do you need?"

"I'm cold again."

Hotch decided that Reid's best position, now that he seemed much more stable, was sitting upright. With Morgan's help, he pulled his youngest team member up to lean his back against the cinderblock wall. He finished by tucking his own coat, which was longer than Morgan's, around him.

"And could I have some water?"

Morgan started to get up, but Hotch grabbed him by the arm, stopping him. He considered the volume of blood that Reid had lost and noted his abnormally pale complexion, heavy sweat, chills, and deteriorating breathing patterns. He pinched the skin on the back of Reid's hand, and the capillaries didn't refill. He estimated that Reid was going into grade 2 shock.

"Reid, you can't have any water."

"Why? I'm thirsty."

"I know, Reid," Hotch said, "but you're in shock, and you shouldn't have anything to drink for another hour at least."

Reid nodded vaguely as though he understood, and Hotch wouldn't have been surprised in the least if he could. He appeared to be dozing off again, and Hotch let him. The kid must have felt exhausted. He sat next to him, listening carefully to his steadily worsening breathing patterns and keeping two fingers on Reid's right wrist to monitor his heartrate.

"Hotch," Morgan said under his breath, "He's lost a lot of blood, and for right now, we have no way to get a transfusion. He will need water soon."

Hotch nodded. "I know, but I want to hold off for as long as we can so that his body can adjust to the loss of blood and hopefully compensate for it."

"You know that isn't going to happen in a couple of hours."

Hotch knew. He didn't want to say it, but he knew. He rested his head back against the wall as he returned his attention to monitoring Reid's condition, admitting to himself that their situation had plummeted entirely too quickly from exceptionally bad to catastrophically worse.

**Yeah, I know, not a whole lot of excitement.**

**This is a relatively quick chapter, but I hope it satisfies the needs of my absolutely huge crowd of fans (lol) for at least a couple days. I'm not sure when I can update again, so bear with me.**

**I was asked—more than once, I think—if I am a shipper. Pardon my ignorance of common fanfic lingo, but I am literally a brand new member here, and though I know what a lot of other terms mean, I am not 100% sure what it means to be a shipper. If someone—anyone—could clue me in, it would be much appreciated.**

**So…review. Yeah, that's about all I have to say. Review. And I certainly hope you enjoyed.**

**Loose Screw**


	9. Chapter 8

**Hey everyone!**

**I'd like to thank everyone so much for the feedback, and also for the info about my "shipper" question. And no, for all of you that asked, I don't think I will tend to be one. I'm one of those people that would like to keep the story as realistic as possible, and while I know there was this thing between Reid and JJ in the first season, I don't think I'm going to build on that because it has long since passed. I wouldn't feel so bad about pairing a main character with a character of my own imagination in later stories, but it most certainly won't be the focus of the story. One more tidbit: I am not a fan of slash, at all. I hope that answered all of your questions.**

**So…I know you all want to know what happens to Reid, but that will be next chapter. In this one, I absolutely need to focus on what remains of the team because you all know what sort of envelope they are all going to get.**

**And for everyone who cares, the epic composition of awesomeness we all like to call Criminal Minds and the amazing works we like to call the characters are not in any way owned by me.**

**So, let the story begin…or continue…whichever…**

**Chapter 8**

Prentiss backed through the door of the conference room, grunting under the weight of an evidence box that she carried. She set it down next to another just like it and leaned against the table. She looked at the clock over the door. It was just after three o'clock.

"Is that the new crime scene evidence?" Rossi asked without raising his head from the photos he had scattered at his end of the table.

"Yeah. The call came right on time." Prentiss pulled from the box a professional picture of a teenage boy with his arms around a much younger girl. "Michael Anderson, age fifteen, sophomore at Tri-County. Stabbed to death, feet removed."

"Feet, huh?" Rossi picked up the photograph and looked at the boy. "Who's the girl?"

"His little sister, Jessica."

Michael Anderson was a good-looking kid with a slightly crooked nose and a small, almost invisible scar on his chin. His hair was blonde, and even though it was grown out slightly, Rossi recognized the slightly uniformed cut that kept his sideburns neat and his hair a safe distance from his ears.

"Is he a military kid?"

Prentiss looked up. "What?"

"Are either of his parents in the military?"Rossi repeated. "His hair is to code."

Prentiss shrugged as she opened a folder. "Christine Anderson is a sales manager for the Toyota dealer on N Main Street, and his father…is in an alcoholism rehab center in New York," she explained. "But it says here that Michael was in Tri-County's JROTC program."

Rossi looked at the picture one more time before he slid it back across the table and resumed his study of the material on his own case, both from what the kidnapper had sent and what he had managed to dig up at the police department. So far, nothing fit. They all looked like random kidnappings.

"Rossi?"

"Hm?"

Prentiss slid the picture back toward him. "I thought you might want to know that your 'brown-eyed men' theory has just been proven incorrect," she said.

Rossi glanced back at the picture, and surely enough, Michael Anderson's eyes were some of the bluest he's ever seen. He sighed. "So there's no connection."

Prentiss took the picture back again, watching as Rossi rubbed his face tiredly. "Did you interview the parents of the victims for our kidnapper's case?"

Rossi nodded. "None of them are him, and according to both mothers that have remarried, they haven't seen their ex-husbands in years. I even looked at pictures. None of them are him."

"So…what connection does this man have to the four kidnapped girls? Why should he care so much?"

Rossi shrugged.

Garcia spoke up. "I ran crosschecks for the guy, but I couldn't find him. As far as I can tell, all of the parents of the girls are accounted for."

"And on top of that, these kidnappings look so random, I honestly don't believe they're related at all," Rossi said.

Prentiss shrugged. "Do any of them live close to one another?"

Rossi rummaged around in his unsightly stacks of pages until he brought to the surface the victim information. "None of them live on the same street," he said, "but that doesn't mean anything. Garcia, could you plot a map with these four addresses?"

Garcia looked over at him with her big brown eyes and gave him a mock frown…but somehow it lacked its usual bravado. "Oh, and see what he thinks of me? But of course I can—uh—aw crap!"

"What?"

"I can't think of a single charming thing to say," she said, and her nose started to turn red. She jerked back to reality and snapped her fingers. "Map. Right. Addresses?" Rossi gave them to her, and after thirty seconds of typing, had the results on her laptop screen. "Rossi, you're going to want to see this."

Rossi walked around to the back of her chair and leaned over Garcia's shoulder. The screen showed four red dots…all within the same dead end neighborhood. "That's our link," he said, and he stood, walking toward the door to leave. He stopped as he realized he knew more about Prentiss' unsub than she did and turned around. "I have thoughts on your unsub if you would like them," he offered.

Prentiss nodded. "Good, because I'm lost."

"Your unsub is a college-aged woman that lives permanently nearby both schools. She attended Tri-County High and is targeting boys that resemble those that remain unpleasantly in her mind. Old boyfriends, perhaps?"

Prentiss and Garcia looked at each other. Rossi turned back to the door and was reaching for it at the same moment it burst open, and JJ rushed into the room.

"Guys, he was here again," she said, and she held up another yellow envelope.

Rossi shut the door and hurried back to the table as JJ ripped the envelope, which was considerably smaller and lighter than the previous one, open and pulled out several photographs and another note. The four of them leaned in.

What they saw shocked them into silence. The first photograph depicted Hotch and Morgan leaning over a third body that they recognized as their own beloved boy genius. Reid was lying on his back on the concrete floor. They could see that his beige pants were stained in blood, and a lot of it. But more horrifying, however, was the fact that Hotch was pressing a completely blood-covered into Reid's shoulder.

"Oh my God," Garcia whimpered. "Reid…"

JJ lifted the first photograph to show the second. She blinked back tears and Prentiss covered her mouth in worry as the second photo showed Reid, in very much the same condition as before…but his neck was arching backwards, his face a mask of intense pain, his shoulder far more exposed to show a dark spot spread across the whole upper left area of his sweater vest, Hotch's hands overturned in the air above him, covered in the dark stain they all knew to be Reid's blood…

None of them wanted to see the rest of the pictures, but at the same time, they had to. How many had he gotten? JJ slowly set aside the second and stared at the third.

It was a closer shot of Reid. He was looking directly at the camera. His eyes were rimmed red. His mouth was hanging open as he gasped for air. His brow was wrinkled in pain. In his eyes, they could not help but interpret a his pleading for help.

JJ dropped the photographs on the table and turned away, crying into her hands without shame. Prentiss resumed walking in circles. Garcia had streaks of mascara down her face. Rossi didn't know what to do other than to pick up the note.

" 'Agents of the BAU,' " he read aloud, " 'The photographs I have enclosed, as I am sure you have discovered, are of the three missing members of your team. I the event that I have not provided enough incentive and motivation for you, young Dr. Reid has been shot.' "

Garcia gulped quietly and Prentiss cursed. "That sick son of a…" She stopped up short. "Sorry."

" 'He has received a gunshot wound to his right leg and his left shoulder. He will need medical attention quickly, and I cannot afford to allow him to leave until I know that my case will be solved. Until that time, rest assured that Dr. Reid's time is running out.' "

Rossi finished reading the note and laid it gently on the table. He wandered through the room with his hands on his head for nearly a minute, thinking through the facts, calculating the possibilities, and hoping for the rest of the team. He looked at the white board. He looked at the piles of papers and clues on the conference table. He couldn't work the case alone. Prentiss couldn't work hers alone. The press was yet to get a statement…so much to do, and so obviously too little time.

Rossi lost his temper—something the other three had rarely ever seen—and punched the wall beside him, leaving a hole in the sheetrock. Ignoring the blood dripping down his fingers from his knuckles, he stormed out the door.

The three women of the team stood around for what seemed to be ages, crying together silently, until they each returned to their jobs individually. JJ left the room, mumbling something about calling a press conference to talk about both all three of the cases. Prentiss settled to closely examining all aspects of her new victims life. Garcia pulled up the best pictures she had of Hotch—their fearless leader—of Morgan—her witty, caramel man—and of Reid—the youngest and, she knew, the one they all worried most for.

Nobidy worried about SSA Dave Rossi. They trusted him. They knew him well enough to leave him alone. But if you had asked any of them, no one knew where he had gone.

**Okay, I'm pretty sure that's an accurate description of what each of them would have done. I hope it is. If you don't think it is, pretend it is, for the sake of the story!**

**Review. You know you have thoughts to share ;-)**

**Loose Screw**


	10. Chapter 9

**I'm back!**

**Did any of you miss me? I know you did, so don't even think about lying lol. Have no fear, the Loose Screw is here!**

**Just so you know, my updates will probably be a lot slower now, not just because school is starting in two days but also because I am now typing with one hand. I appear to have a ganglion cyst (or something resembling one) in a joint of my left hand, and my doctor told me not to write or type with it. So please, be patient and bear with me ;-)**

**And as always, I do not own any aspect of Criminal Minds or its characters.**

**Read, review, and most certainly enjoy!**

**Chapter 9**

Rossi yawned and looked up at the clock. It read three forty-five.

He had gone through plenty of sleepless nights before. The job description didn't describe that particular side-effect of working as a behavioral profiler for the FBI, but it should have. Under other—better—circumstances, he would have laughed at the irony that on the nights he wanted nothing better than to fall asleep, he could not while, on nights like tonight, when it was of utmost importance that he remain awake, his eyes would continually droop downward at the most unhelpful of times. As it was, it was nothing more or less than frustrating.

He picked up his pen and placed its ball on a blank page in his notebook, ready to jot down whatever notes came to mind, but he promptly forgot the first. He struggled for near a minute to remember what it was that he had found so important that he would write it down for his own future reference, and he came up empty. He slammed the pen down and rubbed his forehead, staring at a random spot on the carpeted floor for no reason in particular.

_Gunshots and screaming. That was all he heard, and as he spun in circles, he could see every man that had ever pointed a gun in his direction. He saw each of their faces in perfect detail, their mouths forming words that he couldn't individually hear above the din. Everywhere he turned, a weapon was pointed in his face, and he realized suddenly that he was in the middle of an enormous circle, the target on all sides. Then, the guns all fired at once._

"Rossi!"

Rossi jerked awake and reflexively seized his handgun from its holster on his hip, aiming it directly at Prentiss. JJ stood in the doorway, holding a cardboard tray of coffee cups.

Prentiss raised her hands in surrender. "It's Prentiss! It's Emily!" she said.

Rossi, stood up and spun in a circle, like he had in his nightmare, aiming his handgun into every corner of the room until he subconsciously convinced that the danger had passed. That was, if there had ever been any danger to begin with. He shook his head, trying to rid himself of sleep as he recounted the dream. It had been so lifelike, so convincing…

"Rossi, are you okay?"

Rossi nodded as he slid his weapon back into its holster. "Must have…fallen asleep…"

JJ stepped carefully into the room, pulling large coffee from the tray in her hands and handing it to Rossi. "When did you get back? We were going to wait, but it was eleven, and we had to get some sleep…"

"Then I must have just missed you because that's about the time I got back. Been working on the case. There…there isn't anything new…Is Garcia coming?"

"She's getting her things from the SUV," JJ said. "She doesn't trust enough to leave her equipment here overnight without someone she knows to watch it, and we didn't know if you'd be coming back…"

"Where did you go?" Prentiss sipped from her coffee.

Rossi glared at her, and she immediately dropped the subject. Sipping from his own coffee as he settled into his seat again, he picked up where he'd left off. His most recent personal interviews of the parents of the missing girls had hardly turned over anything he hadn't already known, at least to a degree.

The girls had all gone missing from the neighborhood: riding a bike, at the nearby park, walking the dog—which had been found dead later—and weeding a neighbor's garden for some extra pocket money. Rossi had to conclude that the kidnapper lived in the neighborhood near them, even if that wasn't where he was keeping the girls.

Rossi sighed in frustration, in anger, and, most recently, in anticipation. As he looked at the map of the homes, he knew well what it would take to finish the case. A needle in a haystack was not necessarily so difficult to find if you were looking and discarding one straw at a time.

He settled back and waited for Garcia as he reran the information he had and tried to specifically profile the man behind this. He was almost positive it was a man, since it was girls he was taking rather than boys. On top of that, the victimology was very specific, but very opportunistic. He abducted a very specific type of girl—Caucasian and between the ages thirteen and fifteen—and from his specific area.

Was his selection random? Perhaps. But he didn't think the kidnappings were. He saw the girl, dogged her for a few days, and abducted her when he knew he could get away with it. Selection of opportunity, premeditated crime. There was no connection between the girls other than their residences…and that somehow, these girls played into their unsub's fantasy, whatever it may have been.

He suspected a sex-related motive. He didn't have any solid evidence other than a hunch and that these girls were specifically white and approximately the same age. He knew he needed more than that.

So how did he find his unsub?

Slowly. But he did in fact have a plan, however crude it might have been. Considering the best agents on the team were not at his disposal—which was in fact the condition under which he operated—he decided that the ends would most definitely justify the means.

Garcia came in through the door, two heavy-looking bags over her shoulder, her laptop case under her arm, and pulling with her an equipment box on wheels. Rossi waited patiently for her to set up and get running before he asked his question.

"Garcia, would you be able to pull records of all the men living on Norumbega Circle, Franklin?"

"Have you forgotten who you're talking to?" Garcia's keys clacked as she pulled up a map of specific house numbers along the specific road Rossi had indicated. "I am the magician of the computerized world known to the general population as cyberspace."

Rossi ignored her coping mechanism and sipped his coffee again. It was a minute or two of unnerving clacking, Garcia's tongue sticking slightly out the corner of her mouth as she concentrated, before she spoke again.

"Okay, bear with me here. I can access the files, but this'll take time because I have to search, isolate, and print all of these individually. Believe it or not, Norumbega Circle is a much bigger circle than it looks to be on a map." She chuckled as her fingers flew over the keys on her keyboard. "As I find them, I'll print them to that printer." She pointed to a large and slightly-outdated printer sitting on a cheap folding table against the wall behind her. As she spoke, it whirred to life and a page glided onto the tray.

Rossi walked behind her to the printer and picked up the first two sheets, which was a general profile of one Lou Mills, number twelve Norumbega Circle, including a juvenile criminal record for shoplifting when he had been seventeen.

"Do you need help?"

Rossi looked up at JJ as the printer started to roll again.

"I know I can't really profile, but if you tell me what you're looking for," she said as she picked up the next page the printer spit out, "I can help you sort through these."

Rossi nodded, and she pulled a swivel chair out from the conference table and sat down.

"Push over those boxes and lay these out on the table as I hand them to you," Rossi said as she handed her Lou Mills' information, and he started relaying to her what he had figured out about their unsub's profile. Prentiss jumped to action, moving the boxes from the table to the floor in order to give them all the room they needed.

"This guy is…he's organized," Rossi started. "He is probably late-thirties to early forties and Caucasian. He takes these girls for their age, not for their physical features. He may have a sexual fantasy about younger girls." He paused to hand JJ what felt like five or six pages-worth of information on the next man. "He is also new to this. Whatever his motive, it isn't personal, and he therefore has few boundaries. However, he doesn't take advantage of the freedom, at least not yet."

"Help me understand that…'Not yet'?"

"This man has the freedom to do almost whatever he wants with these girls. No time restraints, which may mean that he is recently unemployed, recently divorced, or works out of his house. He also lives by himself. He is too careful about these kidnappings to risk being noticed, and since I'm virtually positive he watches these girls for a little time before he makes his move, he would have needed the time to do that. That's something that a spouse or girlfriend would have noticed. He also has the space somewhere to do what he wants with them; perhaps even in his house, since the lack of family means there is little chance of somebody discovering them. Now, he may not have discovered what he can really do yet, but that isn't to say that he won't, or that he won't expand upon whatever he's doing when he does."

JJ nodded and accepted another profile.

"So," Rossi continued, "he doesn't live with anybody, and yet he lives on Norumbega Circle, an extremely upper-middle class society. He either has a steady occupation, had a steady occupation, or inherited a lot of money from somewhere. He also cares more for himself than for other people, which may in itself be a cause for him to be alone."

JJ nodded. "So…a middle-aged, single white guy that earned or inherited the money to live in a house on Norumbega Circle, but was most likely out of work for the moment."

Rossi nodded. "He also was probably sexually abused by somebody when he was much younger…or he may have watched someone close to him being abused."

"Okay, sir profiler, sir," Garcia said, "I believe that is all of the men on Norumbega Circle. Do your profiler thing."

"Thank you, Garcia," Rossi said, and he slid his chair over beside JJ. "Remember, white, late-thirties to early-forties, single, no time restraints, money to support himself, possibly a second property…"

JJ stared at him as he trailed off. "I could never have figured all that out by myself," she said.

Rossi shrugged. "It took years to perfect it," he said.

"Rossi?"

"Hm?"

JJ sighed and looked around at the other two in the room, who had paused in their various acts of bringing criminals to justice, and she knew she was voicing aloud the thoughts of the entire room. "They are going to be okay, right?"

Rossi stared at her for a long moment before he shook his head. "I would lie to you and tell you that they would, but I really don't know."

JJ looked down at her hands, which were resting on top of a small packet of papers. "I guess I knew that." She chuckled and wiped a tear from her eye. "Okay, let's get this done."

Rossi nodded silently, and he picked up one of the stacks of paper. He immediately discarded it because the man was fifty-three. The second one, too, he tossed aside because he lived with a family of five. For ten minutes, the two of them searched through the accumulation of information, pulling aside a few that looked promising, until JJ pushed one under Rossi's nose.

"I am absolutely not a profiler, but this guys fits what you said to a T," she said quickly, and Rossi took the ten-or-so papers.

They belonged to Kevin Rutledge. He was thirty-nine, and his photo showed a man who was much thinner than he ought to have been with thinning, curly red hair. The second page was the deed to his home, paid in full. He had inherited 1.3 million dollars from his father, who had owned the Paul Davis national franchise company. Two of the papers were a marriage license and copy of a written, mutual divorce only ten months later, both six years previously. The rest of the pages were records of various misdemeanors and juvenile misdeeds. When he got to the last three pages, he felt his eyes widen.

"This is our guy," he said, and he immediately leapt from his seat, picking up his jacket and dialing his cell phone. He left the room.

"What do those say?" Prentiss asked, as she had been startled by her superior's sudden reaction. She picked up the documents from the table. "But…that makes such perfect sense!"

"What is it?" Garcia asked.

"Twenty-nine years ago," Prentiss read from the pages, "Rutledge's father was arrested for sexually assaulting his three daughters, Rutledge's sisters. Rutledge testified on the stand that he had witnessed it several times." She looked up from the papers, disgust etched upon her face. "He was ten," she said.

"Prentiss! JJ!" Rossi poked his head back into the room. "Grab your weapons and come with me. The judge already signed the warrant to search all property belonging to Rutledge."

The three quickly left the room, and Garcia stared after them from where she sat. She minimized the window she had been working on to see the pictures she had pulled up of Reid, Hotch, and Morgan. She stared at them for a long minute, trying her best not to imagine them on that horrible concrete floor, staring fearfully at the camera that captured them that way.

"Hold on, guys," she said, her lower lip quivering. "They're coming for you."

**I don't have much to say about this chapter, other than that this story isn't nearly as over as it seems like it is ;-)**

**And guess what? I can't sleep either! I know, story of my life, right? So, I'm writing another chapter right now, and that'll be up in a few hours.**

**Hope you all enjoyed that!**

**Now, review!**

**Loose Screw**


	11. Chapter 10

**Yep, I'm here!**

**Okay…so I know that I promised this update almost two days ago…but as it turns out, it was definitely a lot harder to write than I thought it was going to be. That being said, I also originally wrote about twice as much as you see here. I decided that there was a definite breaking point in the middle, and I will save the second half for later. Of course, next chapter, I'm going to jump briefly back to the rest of the team, but hopefully, your wait will be worth it.**

**So, back to our boys in distress.**

**Which I have no part in designing, by the way.**

**Read, review, and as always, enjoy!**

**Chapter 10**

Hotch and Morgan had taken turns watching Reid throughout the night. Their young genius needed his sleep, and they let him…but neither of them dared to guess how close the bullet came to his chest. After removing the thoroughly blood-soaked sweater vest, Reid had fallen into a pain-free slumber, for which the other two were exceedingly grateful.

Hotch had fallen asleep after Morgan took over the last time. He snored quietly, scrunched up in a ball for the cold, pillowing his head with his arm. Morgan rested his head back against the wall, carefully keeping his eyes open. Every so often, he would hear Reid's breath hitch in his chest, even though the kid was sound asleep. He reached out to feel a pulse in his carotid artery every time anyway, and though it was slightly uneven, it was always strong enough.

It was early morning—Morgan knew because the window had begun to brighten from pitch dark to a deep cobalt blue—when he heard Reid moan. Morgan could not decide immediately if the kid was still asleep or not, but when he turned his head to the side, he could see his eyes scrunched tightly in pain. Reid gasped, and his eyes cracked open.

"Hey kid," Morgan muttered, shifting to sit more upright. "How you feeling?"

Reid tried to look up at him, but his eyes didn't seem to focus. He shivered, and film of fresh sweat coating his face. He didn't seem like he could answer coherently. He shut his eyes again and his head fell back against the wall. He moaned.

"That's okay, Reid. You're okay." Morgan placed a reassuring hand on Reid's arm.

"Mor…gan?" Reid gasped.

"Yeah, kid, I'm right here."

"It…it burns…" He sucked in the air in great gasps as though oxygen might go out of style.

"Calm down, Reid. You're going to be okay." Morgan tucked in a loose edge of Hotch's coat, trying to seal off the coolness of the air from Reid's feverish body. "I know you're in pain, but everything's going to be alright."

Slowly, Reid's breathing eased to a deep, slow, even pattern that Morgan recognized as the one with which Hotch had encouraged him eighteen-or-so hours before. With a deep stab of sorrow, Morgan realized just how much pain Reid really was still in, even hours after the fact. He chastised himself for thinking it could possibly have gotten any better.

Morgan listened to Reid for a long time. He didn't know how long it had been. All he knew was that Reid's breathing still sounded slightly labored, and it made him uneasy.

He guessed that it was half an hour later that Reid mumbled, "Morgan?"

"Yeah, pretty boy?"

"Do you…do you think I'll ever see the rest of the team again?"

Morgan leaned forward to look at him directly in the eyes. "Of course you will, Reid. Why wouldn't you?"

Reid closed his eyes, and his head fell back. "Part of me wonders if I'm gonna die here."

Morgan's heart went out for the kid. He searched for the right words before he stuttered, for lack of something better to say, "Do the math, kid. The statistics. What are the chances that a wound like yours, however much it might hurt right now, is fatal?"

"With or without medical attention?"

Morgan didn't say anything. He knew what Reid was getting at, and he had to admit that he might be right. He didn't say anything. He _couldn't_ say anything. He knew he's say the wrong thing.

"It's just…" Reid started, and he thought for a moment. "It's just that I can't help but to think about all of their little quirks in detail, now of all times."

"What do you mean?"

"I know we all promised not to profile each other, but now I can't help it. I never wondered why, uh, Garcia, for instance, is so upbeat all the time. It never really occurred to me that it might just be because she doesn't have anything else happy to hold on to."

Morgan didn't say anything. He didn't quite understand why Reid was saying these things, but he understood well enough that he needed, most of all this minute, to get it out. Besides, he understood exactly what he was talking about.

"And Emily. I never really thought about why she doesn't react to some of the things she sees in this job, but it makes sense now that it's because she wanted so badly to prove herself when she first started here by being the perfect agents that it's a habit. It never helped that her mother was always too focused on the job to talk to, and she was always surrounded by kids that didn't speak her language. She was practically forced to be the suffer-in-silence type of person."

"Reid, you are going to see them again," Morgan repeated. "You don't have to worry."

Reid smiled a little. "I hope you're right."

Morgan looked over at Hotch and was shocked to see that his eyes were open, staring blankly at the wall opposite them. He had heard every word.

"Reid," Hotch said, and Reid started. "How do you feel? Honestly?"

Reid shrugged with his good shoulder. "It hurts," he said quietly, "but maybe not so much now." He closed his eyes. "My head hurts. My throat hurts. I'm freezing." He looked like he would fall asleep again.

Hotch leaned toward him and put a hand on Reid's face. Reid sighed at Hotch's cool hands, and Hotch sighed after a moment too. He looked solemnly in Morgan's direction until he caught his eye, and Morgan took the hint, sliding closer to Hotch and leaning his head in.

"Morgan, he has a high fever," Hotch barely whispered, so that Reid couldn't hear. "He was shot almost a day ago, and he needs medical attention. Now."

"Hotch, we aren't in a hospital," Morgan argued in a voice as equally low as Hotch's. "We are risking serious infection as it is."

They both turned to look at Reid as they heard his breathing hitch in his chest, a restrained gasp of pain as he reached up to explore the blood-stained shirt that was tied tightly around his shoulder. Hotch looked meaningfully back at Morgan.

"Well, do you have a plan?" Morgan pressed.

"We both know that this was an accident," Hotch said. "This guy still doesn't want to kill a federal agent. My guess is that he will still provide us with medical supplies to help Reid ourselves if we asked him for them."

"And what? Remove a bullet from Reid's shoulder down here?"

"I'm pretty sure all three of us know that bullet is going to kill him if it doesn't come out, and quick."

Morgan gaped at Hotch, then looked over at Reid. Reid was breathing heavily again, and even though he was trying to take the deep breaths Hotch had showed him the day before to ease the pain, he was already having difficulties.

He nodded. "Fine, Hotch, go ahead and operate on him if you have to." He rubbed his jaw, feeling the scratch of his unshaven whiskers. "But he'd better still be alive whenever we get him out of here."

Hotch nodded and stood up, and Morgan scooted over to sit beside Reid again, trying to comfort him. Hotch watched them over his shoulder for a few seconds before he went to the door and raised a fist. He sighed and banged on the door. "Hey! Hey, come down here, we want to talk!"

"What's he doing?" He heard Reid mumble, and Morgan answered him, "Getting you some medical attention."

The stairs creaked once, and Hotch could hear the footsteps approaching. The little rectangular hatch in the door opened , and he could see their captor beyond it. He wanted so badly to reach through the hole and strangle the man, but he cared even more about helping Reid, and strangling the only man that could provide them with what they needed would not have been helpful.

"What do you want?" the man snapped.

Hotch swallowed and stepped back, allowing the man to see Reid, propped against the wall, a bloodstain spreading down the left side of Reid's white shirt. As though on cue, Reid groaned softly, but loud enough that the man heard.

Hotch turned back to the man. "He isn't going to survive without medical attention," he said.

"Too bad, because none of you are leaving until I see a suspect arrested on the news upstairs."

"That's…that's not what I want."

The man's eyes narrowed. "Well, then, what _do_ you want?"

Hotch swallowed again. "I have training in some emergency field first aid, and I could care for him until we can leave and get proper help," he said, "but I'll need some supplies."

There was a long silence. "What is it that you'll need?"

Hotch let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "We need, uh—a large bottle of medicinal alcohol, a lighter, as many clean, dry cloths as you can get, lots of butterfly closures, and fresh water." He shifted slightly from one foot to the other. "We will also need surgical tweezers, if you can get them, and a small, sharp blade."

""No," the man said immediately. "Do you think I'm stupid? Alcohol, rags, lighter, and a knife? Do you know what that spells for me?"

Hotch shrugged. "Potentially. But I also know what the jury will spell out for you if he dies." He jerked his head over his shoulder toward Reid, who was gasping audibly in building pain.

Hotch watched him for a moment. The fact that he had been reduced to semi-consciousness with no physical alterations so quickly worried him. He had been fully lucid only a few minutes ago.

Hotch turned back to look at the man through the iron hatch. "Please," he said, lowering his voice again. "We just want to save him."

"Hotch, gut some ice!"

Hotch spun around to see Morgan with a hand on Reid's sweaty face. Reid's head had slumped forward, and he was shaking so violently, he thought for a brief moment that he might have been having a heat seizure. He immediately stepped across the cell and dropped down next to Reid. He could feel his fever before he touched him.

"Do you have ice upstairs?" Hotch looked back up at the man.

The man nodded.

"Good. Bring down as much as you can, as fast as you can!" Hotch pulled his coat off Reid to cool him before he realized the man hadn't moved. "_What are you waiting for, Christmas?_"

The man closed the hatch again, and Hotch heard his feet thundering up the stairs and on the floor directly above them. He and Morgan moved him once again to a lying position on the ground as the man rushed into the cell with yet another five-gallon bucket filled halfway with ice from the ice maker. The man dropped a box of gallon-sized Ziploc bags next to Hotch, and Hotch immediately started filling the bags with ice as the man rushed out again.

"Morgan, put that under his neck," he said, and he all but threw the bag of ice at Morgan and started filling a second. He wiped his brow as sweat accumulated there and started to run down his brow. He looked up and saw that the man was watching them closely from the hatch in the door.

"This is real," he said. "This is happening. You just about killed an agent of the FBI. Will you help us or not?"

The man nodded stiffly, watching as Morgan yanked up Reid's shirt and slapped another ice pack on his abdomen. "I'll see what I can do," he said, and the hatch closed.

Hotch held the ice on top of Reid's head as Morgan pulled Reid's wrists up to rest on top of the ice on his belly. They looked at each other without anything to say as Reid continued to shiver violently.

"Hold on, Spencer. Hold on."

**Yeah, I know there wasn't a lot there. The chapter was definitely a bit more interesting originally.**

**Review, people! A click and a few clacks, that's all there it to it!**

**Loose Screw**


	12. Chapter 11

**I have returned!**

**Ok I know very well that you are all ticked off as heck at me. I kinda left you all hanging and cut you off for like a week or however long it was. For that, apologies a thousand. School sucks, and this proves it. I'll make a mental note of that for future reference…**

**So, we are picking up where we left off with the rest of the team, and they just found out who their unsub is. At least, the unsub for the case the kidnapper assigned to them.**

**And since I'm going to be writing something for this fabulous fiction that is really owed by CBS, I might as well cover my you-know-what and make sure everyone knows that I still don't own Criminal Minds or its characters. Darn.**

**Not much else to say, other than to read, review, and most definitely enjoy!**

**Chapter 11**

The three FBI agents drove slowly in their SUV, courtesy of a local ordinance that ordered a speed limit of twenty-five miles per hour, and since they weren't positive—or at least, they had no evidence—that they had the right guy, they couldn't use their lights.

_Curse the clouds_. Rossi smacked the top of their more-that-slightly outdated GPS and sighed. The overcast weather never aided them. "Okay, guys, Norumbega Circle should be somewhere directly off Charles River Drive."

"Why do they call this whole neighborhood 'Charles River Drive'? It's just this road, and there have got to be tens of miles worth of roads here." Prentiss leaned closer to her window to read a street sign they were passing.

JJ frowned at one of the houses, the largest she had seen by far, and it's overly-spacious front yard with two, black, standard poodles lying in the grass. She was almost afraid to see what the backyard looked like.

"Norumbega Circle," she announced suddenly. "Rossi, it's this next—"

"I see it," Rossi said, and he turned left up a gentle hill. They drove up around the arch and back down the other side, where they could see it intersect a second time with Charles River Drive. "Number thirty-nine, this is it."

They parked on the street. All three of them got out of the car and walked up the driveway, courteously avoiding to walk on the nicely-trimmed and spot-free grass. JJ once again frowned, but this time at the two cars in the driveway. One was a black, '67 Chevy Camaro in what looked to be perfect condition, the other a silver Mazda RX 8.

Rossi reached the front patio and knocked firmly on the door. It was several seconds, whilst they all shifted foot to foot, until the door was opened. Rossi wasted no time.

"Mr. Rutledge?" he asked and trust his badge in the man's face. "I'm SSA Rossi, these are Agents Jareau and Prentiss. We have a warrant to search your property regarding an ongoing kidnapping case." He handed the warrant to the man.

The man—who looked exactly like his picture, down to the white collared shirt—took the paper in surprise. He didn't move from his doorway until Rossi breezed by him and into the home, and JJ and Prentiss followed.

"Search it all," he ordered as he stood in the middle of the foyer and put his hands on his hips, admiring the vaulted ceilings. He didn't much care for the rather plain walls—he had noticed almost immediately that he had no pictures, not even a painting—but the house itself was nice.

"Excuse me, Mister Rossi—"

"Agent," Rossi snapped. "That's Agent Rossi."

"Agent Rossi," the man said, and he pushed his glasses back up his nose, "exactly what is this regarding?"

"Well, Mr. Rutledge, as I am very sure you know, there have been a series of kidnappings from this very street, and after reviewing all records you have with the US government, we think that you might have something to do with it."

Rutledge raised his eyebrows. "Don't sugar-coat it or anything," he said.

"I was wondering," Rossi said, "if you would mind terribly answering a few questions for me, since I'm here?"

Rutledge looked around nervously as JJ and Prentiss pulled every case of investigative equipment they had through the front door. "Uh, no, no I guess not."

"Well, then, please. Let's go visit your sitting room."

JJ and Prentiss glanced back at the two of them as Rossi led Rutledge through a doorway through which were two couched. Rossi sat on one, and Rutledge sat on the farthest cushion from the FBI profiler.

"So," Rossi said as he leaned forward on his elbows, "tell me about your father."

**I know, I know, this is the shortest chapter I've written by far…but in my defense, that is actually where the part with Rutledge ends, for the most part, except for an interrogation later on…but that's pretty much it.**

**There is still more to the story. You know, like if they couldn't find the connection, how is the man who kidnapped our guys a father of one of the girls?**

**Read on.**

**Once again, so so so so sorry for the delay. I should probably be better at updating regularly now that I've gotten over the first week of school.**

**Loose Screw**


	13. Chapter 12

**Hey all!**

**Okay, this is the second half of chapter 10. This was originally part of chapter 10, but it was way too long, and it really had a definite split in the middle. With minor modifications, this turned into a satisfactory chapter 12.**

**Just so all of you know, I bust a gut every single time you post something about killing Reid, and I just want to say that it would take a lot more than a shot to the shoulder to kill Reid. He's tougher than that. Although, with an infection and fever as severe as his, and no way to get medical attention…who knows?**

**I also caught on to a little mistake of mine in chapter 2. I mentioned that the handgun was a CZ 75B 9mm. In case anyone is interested, that is a semi-automatic Czech handgun, and semi-automatics don't cock like I said it did in Chapter 2. So, apology to those who may or may not have caught onto that one. Let's say instead that they heard the safety clicking off, which does make a sound, however slight. Fair?**

**And one last little thing…I would hate to rob anybody of the credit rightfully due them, and so I politely and responsibly disclaim that I own Criminal Minds or its characters.**

**And so, now that I have addressed all of these various issues, let the story continue.**

**Chapter 12**

Reid moaned thickly. Hotch leaned over to feel his sweaty face again, estimating his fever to be at 103 degrees. Or higher. He tucked his jacket around Reid again, although he had done the same only a few minutes before and there were no loose edges to tuck.

With the ice, it had only taken twenty minutes to bring Reid's fever down to a safer number. It had since been two hours, and Reid had gotten steadily worse. He was obviously in more pain than he had been before. His fever was spiking again. Hotch had given Reid the last of the water in the bucket, but the genius' lips were chapped with dehydration anyway. They had laid him on the floor again, hoping that by straightening his spine, they could offer him some form of relief.

"Hang in there, Reid," he muttered, words that he knew didn't reassure anybody in the least but that he had felt compelled to say anyway. Was this what being a good leader was? Watching your subordinates suffer and doing nothing for them but tell them to "Hang in there"? Of all of the benefits of leading a team, none of them outweighed this.

"How is he?" Morgan asked under his breath has he wandered in their direction from the water bucket, having stood there for a full minute, wishing it would magically refill itself and finally given up.

Hotch shook his head as he leaned against the damp wall. The sky outside had clouded quickly, and they could hear the heavy rain outside. Hotch wondered if the barometric change was a source of Reid's intensified pain.

Morgan sat next to Hotch, and there they remained in utter silence for a long time, though for all they knew, it could have only been ten minutes. They finally heard footsteps outside the door.

"Everyone back against the wall," the man ordered, and he peered inside through the hatch to make sure they were all a safe distance from him. He opened the door with a key.

Morgan sat up straighter when he saw another bucket of water hanging from the man's hand, but Hotch was more interested in a cardboard box in the other arm. The man set both in the middle of the cell and quickly retrieved his 9mm handgun from his belt, pointing it at all of them as he backed out of the cell without saying another word. He slammed and locked the iron door.

"Oh, thank God," Morgan breathed as he leapt forward and sipped from the bucket of water without a cup. Then he pushed the box toward Hotch.

Hotch routed through the box with both hands, sighing in satisfaction as he realized that everything he had asked for had been provided, and the man had even thrown in an outdoors first aid kit and a box of latex gloved. He opened the first aid kit and pulled out a pack of instant ice, quickly breaking the pouch inside and pressing it to Reid's forehead. It wouldn't last long, but maybe he could bring down his fever.

Reid gasped as the ice touched his feverish skin. He tried to pull away, wincing as he shifted his shoulder, but Hotch pushed him back down. Reid was too weak to fight and he obeyed with a groan.

"Reid?" Hotch encouraged. "Spencer?"

Reid opened his eyes a fraction to stare at Hotch.

"Reid, we need to remove the bullet." Reid blinked. "We both know that the infection is going to kill you if we don't."

"How?"

Hotch knew what he meant. "Our guy got us some supplies," he said. "With what we have, we should be able to do this with little risk, considering our circumstances."

Reid's eyes rolled lazily away from Hotch, and Hotch knew that he was calculating his chances in his head. He stared at the opposite wall for a moment before he closed his eyes and nodded. "Okay," he said.

Hotch squeezed his good shoulder. "Good man," he said, and he pulled the largest towel he could find from the box. He unfolded it and slid it underneath Reid's shoulder.

Morgan held up the small folding knife, thumbing the blade to see how sharp it was. He reached down to unbutton Reid's blood-soaked shirt, pulling it away from the wound carefully. Reid hissed as the cotton stuck to his wound. He shivered as his chest was uncovered, revealing a small hole that led behind the socket of the joint, under the collarbone. Dried blood was splotched across the entire area, but both Morgan and Hotch noticed the red, raw flesh immediately surrounding the wound and the deep purple bruising that extended halfway the length of his clavicle and dangerously close to his chest.

Morgan couldn't help but stare as he handed the knife to Hotch, who uncapped one of two bottles of alcohol and poured it carefully over the blade, lighting it on fire to disinfect it. As soon as the fire burned itself out, he laid it quickly on top of a clean cloth and covered it over. He turned away to pour some of the alcohol on his hands and Morgan's and they waited only a moment for it to dry before they each put on a pair of gloves, which Hotch noticed were not actually latex but rather nitrile.

"Spencer, we're going to pour the alcohol over the wound to clean it out, okay? It's going to sting." Hotch didn't wait another moment and slowly poured the alcohol over Reid's shoulder.

Reid gasped. He whined. It hurt. More than he really wanted to admit, it did.

"Reid, hold still," Hotch told him quietly, even though Reid had hardly moved a muscle, as he mopped up the blood surrounding the wound. As the horrible crimson was lifted, the vivid colors of the infected tissue and the bruising became even more so.

Wiping what was left of the blood away, Hotch tossed the rag aside and poured another drizzle directly on the wound. Reid tensed as it cleaned out the dirt, dust, and sweat that had surely found its way into his wound. It took several seconds for the alcohol to dry out.

Hotch looked over toward Morgan and nodded, and Morgan understood him. Sitting on Reid's other side, he drew the kid's attention away from his wound. "Hey, there, kid."

"Hey," was all Reid seemed to be able to muster, although Morgan knew he was completely aware. Morgan didn't know what he was supposed to say, but as Reid hissed again—Hotch had probed the wound, examining it visually before he began—he knew he had to think of something.

"I saw that you finished my paperwork," he said.

Reid looked up at him and cracked a smile. "You're welcome."

"Yeah, thank you, kid, really. I don't think it would have ever gotten done."

Reid shook his head. "Especially not since we left to investigate another case," he said. "Then you'd have two cases worth of paperwork to do."

Morgan smiled and looked over at Hotch. Hotch shook his head.

"So…did you know we were getting a case in, then?"

"No, of course not. I just meant that it turns out it was a good thing I did it." He gasped. He let his head fall back on the ground. He swallowed. "Nobody could know a case was suddenly about to come in."

"Well, why not? You seem to know everything else."

Reid closed his eyes and shook his head. "I don't know everything."

"Name one thing you don't know."

Reid opened his eyes and stared at the joists that supported the floor above them. "I don't know how we're going to get out of here," he said.

Morgan couldn't argue. "So…why did you do it?"

"The paperwork?"

"Yeah."

Reid shrugged with his right shoulder. "I couldn't sleep. I didn't want to go home. I finished mine and I needed something better to do. Take your pick."

"How about all three? Come on, Reid, I know when something's wrong. You're not that hard to read."

Reid looked up at him. "Maybe. But my biggest concern right now is—" He gasped aloud again as Hotch poked his shoulder a little too unkindly, and he swallowed. "…that," he finished.

Morgan looked at Hotch, who had picked up the knife again. Hotch gave him a quick nod.

"Reid, give me your hand."

"Why?"

"Just do it, pretty boy," Morgan said, and he took Reid's right hand in his. "Keep still," he reminded him, putting his other hand on top of Reid's uninjured shoulder.

Hotch placed the knife gently on Reid's skin and pressed lightly until the blade broke his skin. Reid tensed and gripped Morgan's hand tightly. It took a few seconds for Morgan to realize that Reid was turning red in the face because he was holding his breath.

"Reid, breathe," Morgan said, giving his shoulder a slight shake. "Come on, man, breathe."

Reid let out a lungful of air in a loud whoosh and with a pained cry. "Aah, God!"

Morgan didn't know what to do but to steady his friend with the hand on his shoulder. Reid gasped for air, his chest rising and falling sharply with every breath, a moan escaping with every exhale. Morgan's heart sank every time he heard Reid's pain.

Hotch wanted nothing better than to stop. He knew what pain he was putting his youngest team member into, and I wasn't enough to tell himself that it really was for the best. With every cry, he wanted to pause…but the incision he had made in order to reach the bullet was bleeding, and he could not stop.

He cut carefully and precisely, making as small an incision as he possibly could, but nevertheless, it was deep. He cut through the layers of muscle, trying his utmost to simply divide between the grains rather than cut through them, pressing deeper and deeper toward where he knew the 9mm slug to be resting.

"Aaah!" Reid screamed, unable to hold it in any longer. "Hotch, stop, stop!"

"Reid, he can't," Morgan tried to reason with him, but his voice cracked as Reid cried out again.

Hotch tried to keep his hand from shaking as he felt the knife point find something hard. "It's okay, Reid, I've got it."

Reid moaned half-consciously as Hotch removed the blade from Reid's shoulder and picked up a pair of surgical tweezers instead. He reached carefully inside the incision and gripped the bullet firmly.

"Okay, Spencer, almost done…"

Morgan blotted a hand towel across Reid's face, cleaning it of the beads of sweat running down his temples and into his hair. Hotch pulled on the bullet, slowly bringing it up through the incision. Reid's head rolled back and toward Morgan, his body now too weak to protest otherwise. A soft groan escaped his open lips, and Hotch still pulled on the bullet that had lodged itself under Reid's collarbone.

The bullet finally came out of Reid's flesh and into their dim light, threads of blood clinging to it. Reid breathed again, his grip on Morgan's hand loosening, and Hotch immediately dropped the bullet onto the cloth he had used to prep his instruments.

Then he stood up. Hotch had never been forced to operate on one of his own team members, and now that it was over, he needed to breathe. Morgan leapt over to Reid's other side, carefully changing his gloves to a clean pair, a pair free of the beads of Reid's sweat. Hotch watched carefully as Morgan clamped yet another cloth over the freely-bleeding incision.

"It's over, kid, it's over," Morgan said, reassuring Reid as he applied direct pressure to the fresh slice in his shoulder. Reid opened his eyes a fraction and stared up at Morgan, gasping unevenly for air, reeling from his procedure. His head dipped a few times as he fought off unconsciousness and dizziness.

Hotch walked quickly to the bucket of fresh water and filled a cup. He stood by the other two as Morgan pulled Reid to a sitting position against the wall once again. Hotch handed the cup of water to Morgan.

"You're going to be okay, Reid." Morgan held the cup up to Reid's lips, encouraging him to drink from it. Reid sipped it cautiously, tipping his head back to let it run down his throat. It was soothing that way. Morgan tipped some more of the water into his mouth, and he swallowed weakly again.

"We're going to patch you up, here, Reid," Hotch said as he managed to bring himself back to the events at hand. "Everything's going to be okay. Rest now."

Reid nodded and let his head fall back against the wall as he shivered violently. He could feel the not-so-gently pressure against his wound—both his wounds—but it did not seem so bad now. He let his eyelids droop closed, and it was only a few seconds before he drifted off to an uneasy sleep.

Silently, Hotch and Morgan worked over Reid, cleaning and bandaging absentmindedly, wrapping him in their coats, monitoring his heart rate and respiration. Reid muttered in his sleep occasionally, and there was little they could do for him but let him sleep.

The hours passed slowly. At six o'clock, the man brought them bowls of soup, and it was all they could do to get Reid to eat even a few bite. Slowly, the window darkened, and finally the single bulb over their heads went out. And there they sat, awake for their colleague, all night.

**So Reid isn't out of the woods, but maybe a little closer to the open than he was before. I hope I was fairly accurate with this stuff…**

**So I hope this suits your needs fairly well. Bear in mind that I just updated with the last chapter less than an hour ago, so make sure you didn't accidently skip that one. I know I've done that before.**

**Review, peoples! Make me very happy!**

**Loose Screw**


	14. Chapter 13

**Hey all!**

**Okay, so I've been forced to return to the rest of the team. Sorry. But we'll see more about Reid and his predicament next chapter.**

**Read. Then Review. But as always, enjoy.**

**Chapter 13**

"I'm going to ask you one more time," Prentiss said as she walked back around the table. "Where are the girls?"

"Which girls?"

Prentiss leaned against the table on her palms. "The girls you abducted from your street."

"I don't know them."

"Correction," Prentiss said, and she stood back up. She picked up the file in front of her. "You _didn't_ know them."

From the file, she pulled out four pictures, and she stared at each of the faces in turn as she laid them on the table for Rutledge to see. "Kelly Baker. Jennifer Kapp. Melanie Schaffer. Sarah Kinney."

Rutledge shrugged. "They supposed to mean something to me?"

"Now listen here," Prentiss said, leaning down in Rutledge's face again, "there are not two, not four, but seven lives on the line right now, and it is entirely your fault."

Rutledge blinked.

Prentiss chuckled. "Didn't know it was that many, did you?"

Then, there was a knock on the window behind her. Prentiss wanted nothing more than to refuse Rossi and stay here—perhaps induce good cause to rip Rutledge's head off—but she knew better. She stared at Rutledge steadily for another moment before she turned and strode from the room, slamming the door behind her.

"This approach isn't working," Rossi explained before Prentiss could say anything. "Let me go in."

Prentiss nodded and took her place next to JJ, staring through the window at Rutledge as Rossi entered to room and sat in front of Rutledge.

"Another fed? Really?"

"Really." Rossi folded his hands on the table in front of him. "My name is David Rossi, and I just want to ask you one thing."

"I didn't kidnap anybody," Rutledge said.

"I know that."

Rutledge shut his mouth. "Oh. Well, then, why did you idiots bring me here?"

"Because we can."

Prentiss smiled to herself. "He's brilliant." JJ looked over at her questioningly, but she turned her attention back to the other side of the window as Rossi started talking again.

"As I said, I just want to ask you one thing."

"What?"

Rossi stared at Rutledge silently for a moment. "What did you think of your dad?"

Rutledge's face spread into a smile. "You brought me here to talk about him?"

Rossi nodded.

"He was a genius," Rutledge said.

"How so?"

Rutledge leaned forward onto his elbows. "I'm sure you looked into my files, right? Three sisters, right? You know that."

Rossi nodded again.

"Well, I was the youngest. Never met my mom. Far as I know, she could just dry up and die. She shoulda been there for us. But, you know, it doesn't matter. Dad took care of us well enough."

"He never abused you?"

"No way," Rutledge said. "He was awesome. He taught me to hunt. Said that the deer that goes alone is always the weakest. Means it only takes one shot to kill it." He leaned back in his chair and put his ankle up on his knee. "I mean, stuff like that. But best of all, he was the one that kept my sisters in check."

"Really?" Rossi seemed genuinely interested. "They needed to be kept 'in check'?"

Rutledge's face distorted in disgust as he recalled a memory. "Women aren't any good for anything. I mean, that other girl that came in? Maybe she's not so bad. She made something of herself, I guess. Oh, but my sisters? Oh, they were always nagging on me, always picking on me…do this, do that, fetch me this…Oh, it _never_ stopped!" Rutledge's voice raised in anger. He pounded his fists on the table to make his point. "But it didn't take much from my old man to shut them up, though! That is, when he was around. Told me that a little beating is all women need to be kept in check. Told me to take that to heart."

"Oh, you haven't disappointed him," Rossi exclaimed, and he looked back at Prentiss and JJ through the window. "I'm impressed."

Rutledge beamed.

"So, you don't know anything about those girls?"

Rutledge considered him for a moment. "Well, I can trust you. You and I? We're the same." His eyes wandered off into the air, and all three of them could tell that he was in a memory. "I've seen them around. I mean, they don't all live on my street, but I've seen them. But seriously, they run wild. I mean, that Kelly girl, she was telling her little brother to put his head under a rock a couple weeks ago. I was washing my car, heard the whole thing. Made my blood boil. And Jennifer? Don't even get me started on her."

"Oh, I hear you," Rossi said. "My sister was totally out of control. Got pregnant when she was fifteen."

"See? That's what I mean!" Rutledge slammed his hand on the table. "Women don't have the right to do things like that."

Rossi stood. "Well, thank you for your time." He leaned in. "I can tell you're a good guy with good ol' traditional ideal. I respect that in a person. I'm gonna see what I can do for you."

Without another word, he left the room and stood beside Prentiss and JJ. Prentiss shivered audibly. "This guys gives me the creeps."

"Well done, though," JJ said as she watched Rutledge through the mirrored window. "I think he'll eventually let on to something if he thinks you share the same thoughts."

Rossi nodded and turned away, crossing his arms as he wandered in circles. "Why can't it ever be easy?"

JJ crossed her arms and looked in. "He's got one of the oldest motives there is…and yet…"

"There is a way to get him," Prentiss said. "You told him we were holding him because we could."

"And?"

"He doesn't think we know he did it," Rossi said. "He isn't all that smart. But he does believe in doing things because you can. Owning a house above his pay because he can. Maintaining a classic car because he can. Abducting the girls because he can."

Prentiss nodded. "Crime of opportunity," she said. "These girls reminded him of his sisters."

Rossi nodded and turned to reenter the interrogation room.

"Wait, Rossi," JJ called after him, "before I forget: You don't have a sister, do you?"

Rossi chuckled and shook his head before he opened the door again.

"Good news, Rutledge," he said. "We've discussed amongst ourselves. We don't think that you did it."

"Well, good." Rutledge slapped the table and stood. "So, I can go?"

"Well, yes," Rossi hesitated, and he sat down on the edge of the table, "but the microphones are off. I just want to know one more thing before you go."

"Yes?"

"How did you do it?" Rutledge was very silent. "I know you did," Rossi continued. "I admire it. Too many girls are becoming too powerful over men. It makes me just as sick as it makes you."

Rutledge glanced over Rossi's shoulder toward the window before returning to Rossi. His eyes narrowed.. "Why did you want to know about my father?"

Rossi shrugged. "I looked into his file, too. He intrigues me. I think his head was in the right place. But he died in prison, so obviously, the only person I can ask is the only person who has carried on his legacy." Rossi leaned forward, building the drama he knew Rutledge wanted to hear. "You."

A smug grin crossed Rutledge's face at the thought, but it quickly turned hesitant as he debated with himself.

"Come on, Rutledge," Rossi urged. He was so close. "You know I won't tell anyone. Besides, I know you can."

Rutledge's smile returned. JJ and Prentiss saw it through the one-way glass. "We got him," Prentiss said.

Rutledge visibly relaxed—his hands unclenching, his brow unfurling, his shoulders resting—and he leaned almost lazily on one arm on the table, a sadistic smile tipping the corners of his mouth. "It was one of the easiest things I've ever done."

**Don't we all wish it was that simple?**

**What do you think? I hope Rutledge's motive sounded alright. It made sense to me, anyway. I have personally come in contact with a number of men who share similar thoughts. I don't particularly care for them, but they do exist.**

**So, anyway….Review! I want to know what you all think!**

**Loose Screw**


	15. Author's Note

Hey all.

I am so so sorry for the delay. You all remember the cyst that I told you all about? As it turns out, it was wrapping itself around the Radial and Ulnar digital nerves in my hand, so I had to have it removed ASAP, or risk nerve damage in my fingers. Needless to say, whole hand and wrist in a cast and drugging myself to control the pain. Fun fun.

It's actually kinda scary…I've never had stitches before, and suddenly I have six sutures in my hand. Freaking me out just a little.

Anyway, I love you all, but it might be another week or so before my story is continued. If you want a short spoiler, though, I'll tell y'all that our boys in distress are either escaping or being rescued—I actually haven't worked out which yet ;-)

So, thank you all for sticking with me, but I beg your forgiveness and patience. I will find time when I'm feeling less groggy to finish the story for all of you.

Until next time…

The Loose and Slightly-Bent-Out-Of-Shape Screw


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